Elio
Fameli
holds a law degree from the University of Florence. He is a
Research Director at the ITTIG – “
Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche
dell’Informazione Giuridica
” (“Institute of Legal Information Theory and
Techniques”), previously known as IDG (“
Istituto per la Documentazione Giuridica
”
– “Institute for Legal Documentation”) –, an organ of the Italian
National Research Council. At this Institute he is currently responsible for
the “Information Technology and Law” section; moreover he is a member of the
Scientific Committee of the Institute and Co-ordinator of the “Cognitive Models
and Knowledge Representation and Management Systems in Law” Project. He is a member
of the Scientific Committee of the international journal “
Informatica e
diritto
”. He published numerous scientific contributions on the application
of artificial intelligence to the law (legal reasoning, legal expert systems,
decision-support and advisory systems in the Law, advanced tools for online
legal information retrieval, etc.), “Computer Law”, and the dissemination of
legal information on Internet. In his most recent research activity he has paid
special attention to the right of the citizen to information on the environment
and to the dissemination of legal and legal-environmental information on
Internet (see the volumes: E. Fameli, A. Cammelli,
Diritto all’informazione
ambientale e sistemi informativi orientati al cittadino
, Padua, CEDAM,
1996, 435 pp.; E. Fameli, A. Cammelli,
Informatica, Diritto, Ambiente.
Tecnologie dell’informazione e diritto
,
Naples, ESI, 1997, 253 pp.; Fameli et alii,
Diritto alla vita e diritto
all’ambiente nel lessico costituzionale e nella dottrina giuridica. Strumenti e
metodi per l’analisi linguistico-concettuale
, Florence, S.T.A.R., 2003, 160
pp.).

Fiorenza
Socci
has a degree in law from the University of Florence. She is a
Senior Researcher at the “Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione
Giuridica” (ITTIG – “Institute of Legal Information Theory and
Techniques”) of the Italian National Research Council. She carries out her
research activities in various sectors, such as the domain of legal
lexicography. W
ithin the domain of “legal
knowledge-based systems” she has taken part in the building of legal expert
systems, and she has written numerous publications on legal knowledge
representation systems. She has collaborated in the designing of a database of
references to materials of legal and administrative interest on Internet
(database called “
Diritto Italia
” – “Italian Law”) and has
participated in the “
Norme in Rete
” (NIR – “Legislation on the
Net”) Project, promoted by the Italian Ministry of Justice, for implementing a
service of unified, free of charge, access to legal materials coming from
public sources on the Web. She teaches courses and seminars on the access to
legal information on the Web.

Introduction: Italian Legal System

On the European Continent, legal systems can be
said to have various origins, but in particular, to have descended from
classical Roman Law, which became with time “
jus civile
”, and can be
distinguished in many ways from the “Common Law”. The Italian legal order has
two fundamental origins, “
jus privatorum
” and “
jus publicum
”;
this traditional division of law does not exist in “Common Law” countries with
an English tradition. The former, concerning Private Law, draws its sources
from ancient Roman law (the “
Institutiones
”, “
Digesta
”, “
Codex
”
and “
Novellae
”) and substantially still mirrors those ancient principles
today, albeit filtered through the experience of the Medieval and Renaissance
jurists (the Glossators and Commentators), and later summarized in the French
Napoleonic codification of 1805, which in Italy was partially affected by the
influx of German Pandectist doctrine. The latter, concerning Public Law, finds
its most direct and modern inspiration in the “Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen” of 1789, following the French Revolution. It was strongly
influenced by the political experience of the Italian Risorgimento, partially
incorporated in the Constitution of the State of Piedmont, promulgated on 4
March 1848 by Carlo Alberto of Savoy (the so-called Statuto Albertino), and finally
fully expressed in the Republican Constitution in force today.

The description above provides a general
outline of the system up to the promulgation of the new Italian Constitution in
1947, which imposed a different and updated approach and interpretation of the
old rules, influencing in a decisive manner the order of the powers of the
individual and of the State and, above all, the relationship between the
citizen and the State.
Furthermore,
it also forced the latter to intervene strongly in the economic field.

It is usually said that the Italian
Constitution is a compromise between the thrust for the simplified popular idea
of justice
deriving from 19
th
century socialist ideas and the innate natural law aspiration of religious
Catholic origin. The Italian Constitution which came into force on 1 January
1948 clearly states that the rights of individuals exist and are protected, but
directs their exercise towards the benefit of the entire collective, according
to the principle, also dear to early French Constitution makers, that the
individual is everything in society but is nothing without it. It is the whole
constitutional framework that, for the purpose of fully implementing the
project for a new society, takes the doctrine formulated by Montesquieu as its
own and clearly separates legislative, executive and judicial Powers, giving each
its own precise rules and autonomy.

The Italian
Constitution was published in a special issue of the “
Gazzetta Ufficiale
della Repubblica
” [Official Gazette of the Republic] on 27 December
1947. The text can almost always be found together with publications of the 5
Codes (“Codice Civile”, “Codice di Procedura Civile”, “Codice penale”, “Codice
di Procedura Penale”, “Codice della Navigazione” – Civil Code, Code of
Civil Procedure, Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, Code of Navigation).
An English translation of the
Italian
Constitution text
, revised and updated to 2003, is in A. Tschentscher
(ed.),
International Constitutional Law
(version edited by
C. Fusaro
). This translation has
been realized for International Constitutional Law (ICL), a scientific
organization that translated also other Constitutions in the world, providing a
special kind of cross references among different constitutional texts.

The Italian legal system, as founded on
Roman and Germanic traditions and based on the written laws value, is a “Civil
Law system”. It is deeply different from the legal system of the
English-speaking countries (so called “Common Law systems”), developed by royal
courts of justice and basically structured as a “Jurisprudencial Law”, in which
just the judges make law, binding by means of their sentences the following
judicial decisions. The distinction between “Private Law” and “Public Law”,
absent in the “Common Law systems”, on the contrary characterizes the “Civil
Law systems”.

Legislative Power is exercised by the
“Parlamento” [Parliament]: that is the “Camera dei Deputati” [Chamber of
Deputies] and the “Senato della Repubblica” [Senate of the Republic].
Legislative initiative belongs also to the “Consiglio Nazionale dell’Economia e
del Lavoro” [National Council of Economy and Labour] and the People. The “Corte
Costituzionale” [Constitutional Court] exercises control over the
constitutional legitimacy of laws.

Executive Power is attributed to the “
Governo
”
[Government], while the “
Consiglio di Stato
” [Council of State] and the
“
Corte dei Conti
” [State Audit Court] have a measure of control and
advisory role over the Executive.

A. Printed
Sources of Italian Law

Considered as a whole, legal information is
basically made up of three main elements: legislative data, case law data and
legal authority data. Naturally, this does not exclude the fact that there is a
large quantity of different data which is very important for legal purposes,
such as administrative acts, notices, circulars and so on. Here, however, for
the sake of our presentation, the paper-based instruments relating to the
dissemination of these data will not be taken into consideration but, rather,
the analysis of the paper-based sources will be limited to the three main types
of sources indicated above.

The concise treatment of the subject which follows separately
deals with Italian legislation, case law and legal authority (leaving aside,
that is, the specific nature of the individual branches of the law). Some
special mention will only be made in relation to the main divisions of Italian
law, namely, Civil Law, Criminal Law and Public Law.

1. Printed Sources of a General Nature

1.1. Legislation

Legislative data are collected into tools which can be divided into
two categories: I) those which contain the text of the legislative measures and
II) those which contain the legislative references.

I) Both official and private publications belong to the former
category. The brief presentation following here is based on this distinction.

Among the official publications, we wish to cite the “Gazzetta
Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana”, the “Raccolta Ufficiale degli atti
normativi della Repubblica Italiana” and the “Bollettini ufficiali regionali”.

The “Gazzetta Ufficiale della
Repubblica Italiana”, published by Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato,
represents the most popular collection.
It publishes not only all the
legislative acts, but also Community and Regional sources, as well as the
decisions and orders of the Constitutional Court and government circulars. For
a systematic search, monthly and annual indexes are also available which enable
the user to identify the act on the basis of the date of its adoption, the
number of the measure and the subject matter that has been regulated. The
legislative acts of the European Union are published in the
Gazzetta
Ufficiale delle Comunità Europee
.

The “Raccolta Ufficiale degli atti normativi della Repubblica
Italiana”, again published by the Poligrafico dello Stato, contains the texts
of Italian legislative measures (set out in order of the number of their
insertion in the collection) and it is provided with annual indexes.

The “Bollettini ufficiali regionali” constitute a
collection of legislative acts passed by the legislative bodies of the twenty
Italian Regions (in Sicily, a region under a special statute, the collection is
called the “Gazzetta Ufficiale”).

Private publications
are made up of special periodical journals which publish legislative material
in various forms. They have chronological, numeric and subject indexes and more
user-friendly tools compared to the “Gazzette” and the “Bollettini ufficiali”.
Within this category, we shall only mention the following as the main works of
this kind:

a)
Lex
, edited by the UTET publishing house of Turin, contains State
legislative acts, parliamentary reports, ministerial instructions, Regional
laws and the legislative acts of the European Communities.

b)
Le
leggi d’Italia
, a fortnightly journal published by Zanichelli of Bologna,
collects together the laws, decrees and all the other legislative measures
found in the
“Gazzetta Ufficiale”, following its order of publication.
The journal also includes the laws and regulations enacted by the legislative
bodies of the Regions, as well as the provisions of the European Union and the
rulings of the Constitutional Court. The material is provided with a
classification system and indexing common to the other publications of “Il Foro
Italiano”.

c)
La legislazione italiana
,
edited by Giuffré of Milan, collects together the legislative acts of the State,
Regions and the autonomous Provinces, as well as the European Community, bills,
decisions of the Constitutional Court, appeals and remissions of actions of the
same Court.

d)
Le leggi d’Italia
, edited by V. De
Martino (De Agostini, Novara), publishes the text in force of the primary laws
of the State, excluding, therefore, secondary sources of the Italian State,
but also primary sources of the Regions and the EU. It is a loose-leaf work,
divided into headings and sub-headings, continually updated and also available
on CD-ROM.

II) Tools for consultation which
do not contain legislative texts but only contain references to them belong to
the latter category mentioned earlier. From the typological point of view, we
can distinguish the publications which are set out in the following:

a) “Digests” are made up of special periodical
journals containing lists of legislative acts and also
“massime”
(case
abstracts) and bibliographies relating to legal authority. Usually, these are
accompanied by chronological, numeric and subject indexes.
The
following are among the most widely used: the “Repertorio del Foro Italiano”
(Zanichelli, Bologna), the “Repertorio della Giurisprudenza Italiana” (UTET,
Turin) and the “Repertorio generale annuale di legislazione, bibliografia e
giurisprudenza” (Giuffré, Milan).

b) Among the “Supplements to Journals”, the most
important are
Legislazione vigente
(UTET, Turin), which has an
analytical-alphabetical subject index, where the references to the provisions
in force are set out, and
Legislazione italiana
(Giuffré, Milan), a
digest of state laws currently in force containing state legislative
references.

c) The “Appendices to Encyclopedia Headings”,
usually provided in order to complete every topic covered, contain information
dated at the time the heading was compiled, but they have the advantage of
being systematic and authoritative because they are prepared by specialists on
the subject. Among the most important legal encyclopedias, we can mention here:
the “Enciclopedia del Diritto”, published by Giuffré since 1958, which is
currently composed of more than 46 volumes; the “Novissimo Digesto Italiano”,
edited by UTET in 20 volumes starting from 1957 and then updated with later
volumes; and the “Enciclopedia Giuridica”, published by the Istituto della
Enciclopedia Italiana up until 1997 and integrated by subsequent volumes of
updating.

With reference to legislative sources, the user may
sometimes be advised, if necessary, to document him/herself by consulting the
Atti
parlamentari
(Parliamentary Acts) on the so-called “legislator’s intent”.
Knowledge of this intention, in fact, whilst not decisive in the interpretative
construction of a provision, may be of great help in understanding its original
meaning. Among the
Atti parlamentari
published, in paper-based form, by
the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Senate, the main one is
Proposte e
disegni di legge
and
Bollettino delle Giunte e delle Commissioni
parlamentari
.

1.2. Jurisprudence

As far as jurisprudential data are concerned, the
user gains knowledge about them through a good many tools for their
dissemination, set out here in accordance with their type.

a) Journals

Some journals are, exclusively or mainly,
specialised in publishing decisions and other judicial measures. In these, each
decision is usually preceded by a “column” which identifies, through “Headings”
and “Sub-headings”, the subject to which it refers (for example, “Sale”,
“Renting”, “Tender”, etc.) and by one or more “massime” (case abstracts)
– without any kind of official nature, in that they have been compiled by
the editors of the journal itself – which summarise the principle of law
stated by the court and they are, in turn, accompanied by a case note or by
references to previous legal literature or jurisprudential cases.

Two monthly journals –
Il Foro italiano
(Zanichelli, Bologna) and
La giurisprudenza italiana
(UTET, Turin)
– publish considerable numbers of decisions and other measures issued by
judicial authorities of different kinds: Community, constitutional, civil,
criminal and administrative case law are divided into special sections. The
journal
Giurisprudenza di merito
is, instead, specialised in the
publication of the decisions of the Magistrate’s Courts, the Courts and the
Courts of Appeal.

b) “
Massimari
” (collections of “massime”)

Only the “massime” (abstracts) of the decisions of
the Italian Supreme Court are published monthly in the following collections of
“massime”:
Massimario della giustizia civile
(Giuffré, Milan),
Massimario
della giurisprudenza italiana
(UTET, Turin) and
Massimario del Foro
italiano
(Zanichelli, Bologna).

c) “
Repertori
” (Digests)

The digests
annually publish only the “massime” (case abstracts) of all the decisions and
other judicial measures published in the Journals and Collections of “Massime”,
organised in a systematic manner under “headings” and “sub-headings” indicating
the journal or the collection of “massime” they have come from. In searching
for case law, from the methodological point of view, the digests are the first
tool to consult: after that, the user needs to go back to the journal in which
the full text of the decision that interests him/her on each occasion is
published, for the purpose of being informed not only about the facts of the
case on which the court bases its decision but also to verify how exact and
congruous the principle of law expressed in the “massima” in the digest is.

Among the Digests of a general nature, we
would like to indicate the
Repertorio del Foro Italiano
(“Il Foro
Italiano” - Zanichelli, Bologna), the
Repertorio della giurisprudenza
italiana
(UTET, Turin), and the
Repertorio generale annuale di
legislazione, bibliografia e giurisprudenza
(Giuffré, Milan).
The characteristics of these works are the annual
frequency of their publication and the fact that they contain subject indexes,
under whose headings the lists of the sources held to be in force are set out,
together with the bibliographical details of the different law journal articles
published during the year under consideration as well as the “massime” of the
decisions, often with references to the journals where they are published in
their entirety. Other indexes of the published case law material include a
chronological index and an index of the names of the parties in the legal actions.

One characteristic
element which distinguishes “
Repertori
” (or “
Massimari
”) from law journals is the
fact that, in the former, only the “massime” (case abstracts) of the decisions
are published, whereas the latter also give the text of the decisions of
greatest interest, often accompanied by a case note or references to judicial
precedents, becoming, in this way, useful supplementary tools. Also, in this
case, there are more general and more specialised journals. Here, it is
sufficient for us to provide only some limited information about the former by
mentioning
Foro italiano
(Zanichelli, Bologna),
La Giurisprudenza
italiana
(UTET, Turin) and
Giurisprudenza di merito
(Giuffré,
Milan).

1.3. Legal Authority

There is a very vast amount of scientific material,
found in handbooks, encyclopedias, journals, treaties and monographs. Digests
and bibliographies prove to be useful tools for consultation. Also, we must
point out that there are various kinds of these tools, both general and
specific, taking the shape of appendices to larger works, as in the case of encyclopedias
and legal dictionaries (as we saw above, in relation to legislative data), or
autonomous works. Obviously, journals are an important tool for documenting
scientific output, especially those specializing in the sector in which a user
conducts his/her research.

a) Bibliographical Digests

Among the Digests of a general kind, we must, in
the first place, cite the
Dizionario bibliografico
(Giuffré, Milan),
edited by V. Napolitano since 1964 which appears annually. In this work, all
the articles which have appeared since 1865, in the journals examined are
classified on the basis of a special index, as well as law books published
since 1964.

In legal encyclopedias,
individual subjects are subdivided into “entries”, set out in alphabetical
order and containing an extended treatment of the single issues dealt with in
relation to the various branches of the law.
The
Novissimo Digesto Italiano
(UTET, Turin,
vols.
20, plus 7 volumes updating it as an
Appendix
) is
directed towards satisfying the needs of legal practitioners, while the
Enciclopedia
del diritto
(Giuffré, Milan) has a more markedly theoretical nature. The
Enciclopedia
giuridica
published by the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana (UTET,
Turin, vols. 32, plus 1 vol. of indexes and 6 issues updating it) and the digest
published by UTET in four sections (
Discipline privatistiche
,
Sezione
civile
;
Discipline privatistiche
,
Sezione commerciale
;
Discipline
penalistiche
;
Discipline pubblicistiche
) are also very important.

2. Sources of Italian Public Law

2.1. Public Law Legislation

2.1.1. The Italian Constitution

The fundamental law of
the Italian State is represented by the Constitution, published in a special
issue of the
Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica
on 27 December 1947 and
coming into force on 1st January 1948. The text of the Constitution comprises
139 articles and is subdivided into four parts: “Fundamental Principles”,
“Rights and Duties of Citizens”, “Organisation of the Republic” and
“Transitional Provisions”. The so-called “Transitional Provisions” can be found
in 18 articles, all listed with Roman numbers.

Among the English
translations of the text of the Italian Constitution, we shall only mention a
few here:
The Constitution of the Italian Republic. Rules of the Chamber of
Deputies
(Rome, Camera dei Deputati, Segreteria Generale, 1990);
Constitutions
of the Countries of the World. Italy
, edited by A.P. Blauistein and G.H.
Flanz (Vol. IX, Dobbs Ferry, New York, Oceana, 1994). An English translation of
the
text of the Italian Constitution
,
revised and updated to 2003, can currently be found A. Tschentscher (ed.),
International
Constitutional Law
(see also the version edited by
C. Fusaro
). It is a translation,
prepared by International Constitutional Law (ICL), a scientific organisation
which also translates other material relating to constitutional documents,
providing a series of cross references aimed at enabling a user to easily and
rapidly compare texts dealing with the same topic.

The
Commentario
della Costituzione,
in thirty volumes, edited by G. Branca and A.
Pizzorusso (Zanichelli, Bologna, 1975-1996), is still today the most complete
treatise on Italian Constitutional Law.

2.1.2. Constitutional
Laws

After its promulgation,
the Italian Constitution was integrated with numerous Constitutional Laws,
passed within the period between 1948 and 2003. For a detailed list of the laws
amending the Italian Constitution, as well as the articles of the Constitution
“etched into” by Constitutional laws, it is advisable to consult the Web site
of the
Constitutional Court of the Republic of Italy
,
which can be consulted in five languages (English, French, German, Italian,
Spanish),
rather than paper-based
sources.

In particular, it
should be noted that when the reform of Title V of the Constitution
(Constitutional Law No. 3/2001) was passed, it left many questions unanswered
on a doctrinal and operational level. For many issues, the need was widely felt
for legislative regulation laying down proper criteria for fully implementing
the reform. In this perspective, Law 5 June 2003, No. 131 was enacted, on
Provisions
for the Adaptation of the Legal Order of the Republic to Constitutional Law 18
October 2001, No. 3
(known as the “La Loggia Law”).

Among the other
more recent innovations, we would like to mention here:

a)
Constitutional Law 30
May 2003, No. 1, which amended article 51 of the Constitution and provided the
necessary constitutional cover for the enactment of legislative acts aimed at
stimulating the participation of women in political life;

b)
Law 20 June 2003, No.
140, under which immunity from criminal proceedings was introduced for the
highest offices of the State (President of the Republic, of the Chamber of
Deputies, Senate, Council of Ministers and the Constitutional Court);

c)
Comments
on the Draft European Constitution.

2.1.3. Acts of the Constituent
Assembly

The preparatory work on the Constitution of the
Republic of Italy deserves separate discussion. The
Atti dell’Assemblea
costituente
were published immediately after the conclusion of the work of
the Assembly: three volumes were dedicated to the work of the Commission in accordance
with the way it was divided internally (
Constituent Assembly
and
Commission
for the Constitution
), while eleven volumes collect the debates (
Atti
dell’Assemblea costituente
,
Discussioni
). The initial proposals and
reports presented to the Commission for the Constitution were only edited as
“proofs”.

An index relating to the activities carried out by
the individual members of the Constituent Assembly is found in the volume
Atti
dell’Assemblea costituente, Attività dei Deputati.
Only in
1980 was an actual analytical index created (M.C. Grisolia,
Indice analitico
degli Atti della Assemblea costituente
, in
Verso la nuova Costituzione
,
edited by U. De Siervo, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1980), regarding the second edition
of the Acts, edited by the Chamber of Deputies in 1970 (
La Costituzione
della Repubblica nei lavori preparatori dell’Assemblea costituente
).

2.1.4. Other Laws of Public Law
Interest

Apart
from the official publications and those of a private nature already mentioned
with reference to legislation in general, we can indicate here the various
“Codes” of constitutional and administrative laws, comprising collections of
more frequently used legislative sources, created by experts in the material in
different sectors of interest. These legislative collections are not, of
course, to be confused with the five proper Italian Codes, which collect together
the fundamental rules in force within the field of civil law, civil procedure,
criminal law, criminal procedure and navigation.

2.2. Public Law Jurisprudence

Apart from the case law
sources mentioned with reference to Italian law in general, we would like to
make note of the following among the specialised digests: the
Repertorio
delle decisioni della Corte costituzionale
, edited by N. Lipari (Giuffré,
Milan), which publishes the “massime” (case abstracts) of constitutional
decisions on the basis of a subject index, an index by article of the
Constitution and an index of the provisions subject to judgment and the
Massimario
completo della giurisprudenza del Consiglio di Stato
(Italedi, Milan),
which, since 1982, publishes an annual volume containing all the decisions of
the Italian Council of State, classified by subject matter.

There are many public
law journals. These include:
Giurisprudenza costituzionale
(Giuffré,
Milan), which publishes all the decisions and orders of the Constitutional
Court, as well as the remission orders to the Court;
Il Foro amministrativo
(Giuffré, Milan);
Il Consiglio di Stato
(Italedi, Milan); and
I
Tribunali amministrativi regionali
(Italedi, Milan).

2.3. Public Law Legal Authority

a) Handbooks

Apart from the encyclopedias
and dictionaries we have already cited in the part relating to Italian law in
general, institutional handbooks of constitutional, parliamentary and
administrative law represent important reference works for learning about
Italian public law.

The main journals in which
authoritative contributions in the sector of public law are published include
the following: the
Rivista trimestrale di diritto pubblico
(Milan,
Giuffré),
Diritto pubblico
(CEDAM, Padua),
Quaderni costituzionali
(Il Mulino, Bologna),
Politica del diritto
(Il Mulino, Bolona),
Diritto
e Società
(CEDAM, Padua).
From the point of view of the legal history of Italian
public law, the work entitled
Il Parlamento italiano.
Storia parlamentare e
politica dell’Italia 1861-1992
(Nuova CEI, Milan, 1988 - 1992) is of great scientific
interest.

3. Sources of Italian Civil Law

3.1. Civil Law Legislation

3.1.1. The
Civil Code

There
are several editions of the Civil Code, all preceded by the text of the
Constitution. In choosing one edition rather than another, the accuracy of the
transcription of the official text, its updating with the later provisions of
repealing laws or the amendment of individual articles and with the abrogating
decisions of the Constitutional Court and the selection of the main special
laws found in the appendix to the Code must all be kept in mind. The most
accredited and most frequently updated editions are those published by the
publishing houses CEDAM of Padua (
Codice civile e leggi complementari
),
Giuffré of Milan (
Codice civile con la Costituzione e le principali leggi
speciali
) and Zanichelli of Bologna (
Codice civile e leggi collegate
).
There are also editions, in a single volume, which bring together both the
Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure, or all of the four Italian Codes
(Civil, Civil Procedure, Criminal, and Criminal Procedure).

We would like to mention here, within the ambit of
the series of Hypertext Codes published by UTET of Turin, the hypertext Civil
Code on CD-ROM, edited for the same publishing house by G. Bonilini, M.
Confortini and C. Granelli, who have, in turn, coordinated more than one
hundred authors, chosen from among the greatest experts in the various sectors
of civil law. The work, in this case, only available on CD-ROM, contains
comments on all the articles of the
Civil Code updated with the
introduction of the most recent legislation and case law. Special attention is
paid to the articles of Book V, the object of the recent company law reform, in
force since 1st January 2004, including the Ministerial Report by way of
explanation and comment.
The database of case law, especially
rich in material in the first edition, has been further widened and today
contains approximately 33,000 documents, while the legislation database has
been updated up until the early months of 2003.

a) Commentaries

Furthermore, there are editions of the Civil Code
in which, in correspondence to each article, information is briefly given on
the main trends in case law and legal authority. Among these, we would only
like to mention here the
Commentario breve al Codice civile
by Cian and
Trabucchi (CEDAM, Padua) and the
Commentario al Codice civile
by Cendon,
published in seven volumes (UTET, Turin).

b) Preparatory works

For a
detailed view of civil law matters through knowledge about the preparatory work
behind the drafting of the Civil Code, it is necessary to consult the work in
six volumes by Pandolfelli, Scarpello, et. al.,
Codice civile
(Milan,
Giuffré, 1940-’43).

3.1.2. Other Laws of Civil Law Interest

Here, reference should be made to a specialized
journal entitled
Le nuove leggi civili commentate
(CEDAM, Padua), which
publishes, on a quarterly basis, a selection of legislative instruments
relating to the material, supplementing them with in-depth comments relating to
both the laws as a whole and to the individual articles of which they are
composed.

3.1.3. Private Collections of
Thematic Legislation

Also in the field of private law, there are additions to
periodical publications which, under the general name of “Codes”, collect
together all the legislation relating to specific topics, such as renting
(“Code of Renting”), labour (“Code of Labour Laws”), etc.

3.2. Civil Law Jurisprudence

With specific reference
to civil law case law, there are journals and “Massimari”, digests and reviews,
edited by the major Italian publishing houses specialised in this legal domain.

Here we
shall cite the
Massimario della giustizia civile
(Giuffré, Milan) among
the specialised “massimari” on civil law. Among the digests, there is the
Repertorio
della giustizia civile
(Giuffré, Milan). The reviews are
characterised by the fact that they contain a logical and systematic
description of the case law. Two large works, published in many volumes but
still a long way from completion, need to be mentioned in specific reference to
civil law matters:
I grandi orientamenti della giurisprudenza civile e
commerciale
(CEDAM, Padua) and
Giurisprudenza sistematica civile e
commerciale
(UTET, Turin).
La Rassegna di giurisprudenza sul codice civile
(Giuffré, Milan) is more
concise.

These
are mainly aimed at those practising the law (judges, attorneys, public
notaries, etc.), and they are clearly distinguished from handbooks for the
greater degree of depth in dealing with the material and, therefore, also for
their wider coverage. Within the ambit of the vast amount of literature
existing on the Civil Code, we recommend: F. Messineo,
Manuale di diritto
civile e commerciale
(Giuffré, Milan, vols.
6, but no longer updated after
1962); F. Galgano,
Diritto civile e commerciale
(CEDAM, Padua, 1999,
vols.
5);
and, finally, the
Trattato di diritto privato
, directed by P. Rescigno
(UTET, Turin).

The series of volumes
by different authors, organised on the basis of a plan which provides for
overall coverage of the disciplinary area under consideration also belong to
the category of Treatises. In this regard, we are able cite several works of
great scientific importance as well as having a considerably broad coverage
(although all still remain unfinished): the
Trattato di diritto civile e
commerciale
, directed by Cicu and F. Messineo and followed by Mengoni
(Giuffré, Milan); the
Trattato di diritto civile
directed by Grosso and
Santoro-Passarelli (Vallardi, Milan) and the
Trattato di diritto civile
directed by Vassalli (UTET, Turin). Other Treatises have for their object only
some of the specific sectors within civil law, such as the
Trattato di
diritto commerciale e di diritto pubblico dell’economia
, directed by F.
Galgano (CEDAM, Padua) and the
Nuovo trattato di diritto del lavoro
,
directed by Riva-Sanseverino and Mazzoni (CEDAM, Padua).

c) Commentaries

Commentaries
are distinguished from Treatises in that, being specifically directed towards
the needs for interpreting and enforcing the law, they follow, article by
article, the order of the legislative text examined. The most widely used work
among lawyers practising Italian private law is, undoubtedly, the
Commentario
del codice civile Scialoja e Branca
, directed by F. Galgano (Zanichelli
– Il Foro Italiano, Bologna - Rome) and made up of several dozen volumes.
The
Commentario del codice civile
, edited by university professors and
judges (UTET, Turin) is more concise and is of a prevalently informative
nature, although it is still unfinished.

d) Encyclopedias

In
general legal encyclopedias, the single topics of interest to the civil lawyer
are also dealt with and subdivided under “headings”, set out in alphabetical
order and containing a broad treatment of the individual themes being examined.
For the main encyclopedias, see those that have already been discussed here in
relation to Italian law in general.

Some other law
journals, mainly characterised by their ideological orientation or for their
methodological approach also involve the private law domain, such as
Politica
del diritto
(Il Mulino, Bologna),
Democrazia e diritto
(Editori
riuniti, Rome),
Justitia
(Giuffré, Milan).
Finally, some journals of a legal
history nature (like the
Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensiero
giuridico moderno
, Giuffré, Milan;
Materiali per una storia della
cultura giuridica
, Il Mulino, Bologna) and sociological kind (like
Sociologia
del diritto
, Giuffré, Milan) are also of interest to the private law
scholar.

f) Monographs

Monographs,
usually published as part of a “Series” of specialised publications edited by university
faculties or scientific institutes, deal in-depth with specific themes within
the branch of the law under consideration. Because they are the result of legal
research, they play an essential role in setting out in a systematic fashion
the problems dealt with on each occasion, proposing path for investigation and,
sometimes, even methods and original solutions. Volumes which collect together
the contributions of more than one author or the Proceedings of Conferences may
also be of a monographic kind, in the sense of referring to a single main
topic.

4. Sources
of Italian Criminal Law

4.1. Criminal Law Legislation

Within
the sphere of Italian criminal law, on the basis of the “principle of the
legislature’s exclusive power to create crimes”, the legislature is reserved
legislative monopoly in the field: sources of criminal law are, therefore,
limited only to laws or to acts having the force of law (“
nullum crimen,
nulla poena sine lege poenali scripta
”).

As a
result, both non-written sources and sources written in a different way from
laws or “acts non comparable to them” are excluded as criminal law sources.
With this last expression, we are referring, within the Italian legal order, to
so called “material laws”, consisting of acts passed by bodies different from
the legislature, but having the “force of law”. In particular, the term
includes: 1) “Delegated Laws” or “Legislative Decrees”, enacted by the
Government on the delegation of the legislature (Arts. 76 and 77 (1) of the
Constitution); 2) “Decree Laws”, enacted by the Government under its own
responsibility in extraordinary cases of necessity and emergency (Art. 77 of
the Constitution); 3) and finally, “Governmental Decrees in Wartime”, enacted
on the basis of the essential powers attributed by Parliament to the Government
during wartime. All the other legislative acts of the Executive (namely, “Regulations”
and “Ordinances”) cannot constitute Criminal Law sources.

4.1.1. “Ordinary Criminal Law”:
the Criminal Code and the Penitentiary Legal System

The main
source of criminal law currently in force is the
Criminal Code
, which
was passed under the R.D. (Royal Decree) of 19 October 1930, No. 1398, and came
into force on 1 July 1931. It was integrated then by the Co-ordinating and
Transitory Provisions (R.D. of 28 May 1931, No. 601) and amended by various
legislative measures, among which those introduced (above all in the period
between 1975 and 1987) for combating terrorism, subversive activities and the
various forms of organised crime are worth special mention. Specific amendments
were brought about by the Constitutional Court, in conformity with its recognised
powers within the Italian legal order. The
Criminal Code
is a
pre-eminent part of so-called “Ordinary Criminal Law”, in consideration of the
fact that most of its provisions apply to all parties indiscriminately.

Apart
from the
Criminal Code
, we need to cite the legal system relating to
prisons (Law 26 July 1975, No. 354, which substituted R.D. 18 June 1931, No.
787) from which “Prison Law” derives and which increasingly tends to link up to
substantive and procedural Criminal Law.

Just as
we did for the Civil Code, we would like to draw attention here to the
publication – within the series of Hypertext Codes by UTET of Turin
– of the hypertext Criminal Code edited by M. Ronco and S. Ardizzone, who
have, in turn co-ordinated a large group of professors, attorneys and judges.
The paper-based work, to which the CD-ROM is appended, is structured as a
commentary, in the sense that article by article it offers a very strict and
in-depth analysis of the legislative provisions, taking into due consideration
the contributions of greatest interest found in the most important legal
authority and case law on questions of law and on the merits. On the CD-ROM, it
is possible to display through hypertext tools all the “massime” (case
abstracts) of the cited cases (16,000) and all the legislative references (850
provisions currently in force) inserted in the comment. In this way, it is easy
to carry out an entire series of searches, which also enable the work to be
consulted in a transversal way.

4.1.2. “Special (or Complementary)
Criminal Law”

Among
the many other sources which give life to so-called “
Special Criminal Law
”
(or “
Complementary Criminal Law
”), in the broad sense understood as
criminal law only applicable to some categories of parties because of their
legal capacity or condition in which they are found, the following should be
noted:

b) Law
7/1/1929, No. 4, having as its object the suppression of breaches of financial
laws. This Law, together with D.L. (Decree Law) No. 429/1982, converted into
Law No. 516/1982, constitutes the principal source of so-called “
Criminal
Tax Law
”, which punishes “fiscal crimes”, harmful to a financial interest
of the State, and for which there are partially different rules from those
found in ordinary criminal law;

c) D.L.
No. 20/7/1934, No. 1400, converted into Law of 27/5/1935, No. 835, for the
establishment and functioning of the Juvenile Courts, with amendments made
under D.L. of 15/11/1938, No. 1208, and by Law 13/10/1965, No. 1771, which
constitute the sources “
Juvenile Criminal Law
”;

d)
D.P.R. (Decree of the President of the Republic) 27/10/1958, No. 956, on
regulating road traffic (the so-called
Road Code
), amended by Law
26/4/1959, No. 207, and by Law 14/2/1974, No. 62, as well as by Law 3/5/1967,
No. 317, on the decriminalisation of the regulations on road traffic;

e) the
Consolidated
Law on Public Safety
(R.D. 18/6/1931, No. 773, with amendments under D.L.L.
10/12/1944, No. 419, and Law 27/12/1956, No. 1423), which continues to survive
despite attacks by the Constitutional Court and bills to reform it.

4.1.3. Other Laws of Criminal Law
Interest

Among
the numerous laws in which criminal regulations can be found, apart from the
Civil Code itself, we shall only mention the Royal Decrees 14/12/1933, No.
1669, 21/12/1933, No. 1736, 15/12/1990, No. 386 (on promissory notes, cheques,
etc.), the R.D. 16/3/1942, n, 267 (on bankruptcy), which constitute the sources
of so-called “
Commercial Criminal Law
”; the “
Code of Navigation
”
(R.D. 31/1/1941, No. 327); the
Consolidated Law on Customs
(D.P.R.
23/1/1973, No. 43); the
Law on Hunting
of 5/6/1939, No. 1016 (amended by
Law 2/8/1967, No. 799); the
Law on Fishing
of 8/10/1931, No. 1604; the
Consolidated
Law on Public Health
(27/7/1934, No. 1265); the
Law on the Press
of
9/2/1948, No. 47; the D.P.R. 9/10/1990, No. 309, on
drugs
; Law
20/2/1958, No. 75, on
prostitution
; Law 2/12/1967, No. 895, and Law
18/4/1975, No. 110, on
arms
; Law 9/10/1967, No. 962, on
genocide
;
as well as the Laws on
social insurance
, on
health and safety at work
,
on
consumer protection
, on
pollution
, on the
termination of
pregnancy
, on
urban planning
, on
taxation
, on
secret
societies
, etc.

4.2. Criminal Law Jurisprudence
and Legal Authority

a) Journals

Within the sphere of criminal law case law and
legal authority, we shall only point out here some of the main Italian
journals dealing specifically with the subject matter, noting that many of them
take into consideration not only case law and legal authority, but also
legislation on the matter. The bimonthly journal
Archivio della nuova
procedura penale
(La Tribuna, Piacenza) covers both legislation and case
law and legal authority, not only within procedural criminal law but also
substantive criminal law, criminological sciences and forensic medicine;
Archivio
penale
(ESI - Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Naples), during the fifty
years of its existence (1948-1998), as a “quarterly publication on special and
comparative criminal law, procedure and legislation” has also had as its
object the analysis of both legislation and case law and legal authority relating
to the matters indicated here.
The monthly journal
Diritto
penale e processo
(IPSOA, Milan), the monthly journal
La Giustizia
penale
(Rome), the journal
L’Indice penale
(CEDAM, Padua) published
every four months, the
Rivista penale
(monthly, La Tribuna, Piacenza),
the
Rivista penale dell’economia
(quarterly, E.S.I. - Edizioni
Scientifiche Italiane, Naples) and the
Rivista trimestrale di diritto
penale dell’economia
(CEDAM, Padua) have the same type of coverage.

The following journals have an even more specific
thematic approach, within the sphere of criminal law materials: the journal
Rassegna
penitenziaria e criminologica
(Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato,
Rome), the
Rivista di polizia
(published monthly by the publishing house
Progresso of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, it deals with legal authority and
legislation, but not with case law, within the field of criminal law,
criminological sciences, forensic medicine and administrative law) and the
Rivista
giuridica di polizia
(bimonthly, Maggioli, Rimini).

1. Portals

Like search engines or
directories
,
portals appear, from a certain point of view, to be in
contradiction with the philosophy of the Internet. Their objective is, in fact,
to structure and to give a hierarchy to information in a world characterized by
nets and a horizontal nature.

In
fact, it is not very easy to give an exhaustive definition to a term which is
currently much abused
[i]
and which include
sites with very different features under the same label. The closest definition
we have been able to find is the following: “a portal is an online editorial
product which plays the role of a preferential access point to the Web for
users and which provides them with the information resources, personal
communication services and tools with which to localize and reach the online
contents and services they commonly need”
[ii]
.

Roughly speaking,
portals are generally divided into two large sub-classes:

·
horizontal
(or generalist) portals aimed at an undifferentiated user group, with a variety
of contents ranging over all kinds of knowledge (e.g.,
Yahoo!
,
Lycos
and, in Italy,
Virgilio
and
SuperEva
.);

·
vertical
portals (also called Vortal or niche portals), aimed at a well defined user
group and focused on specific sectors (for example, for the Law :
NormeInRete
,
among institutional portals;
IusSeek
and
FiloDiritto
, among
private portals).

By adopting an
arbitrary but currently used nomenclature, we cite the following typical terms
and expressions:

·
“
Customization
Systems
”: through which the user creates a customized version of the
portal’s interface
[iii]
.

1.1. Institutional Portals

Among the Institutional
Portals, an important place should, undoubtedly, be attributed to the following
site:

“
Italia.gov.it
”,
the Italian portal at the service of the citizen. Created by the “Dipartimento
per l’Innovazione e le Tecnologie” (Department for Innovation and
Technologies), in collaboration with the Public Administrations and Bodies
which provide citizens with services, it presents itself as a “unitary,
intuitive and rapid, access point to online information and services”. It is a
very well organized site, clear in its graphics and approach and of great
social interest. Through its search engine, it allows a user to carry out an
advanced search, with the possibility of using synonyms. It is a meeting point
for over 3.000 sites of the Italian Public Administration, with more than 1.000
pages of information and services.

In particular:

·
in
the
“Events of Everyday Life”
section, the citizen can find all the
information and services regarding every aspect of daily life (education,
employment, travel, health, entertainment);

·
in
the
“Administration from A to Z”
section, the user can carry out a
search in order to learn all the steps necessary for taking advantage of the
Public Administration services (the documents to present, the office where
he/she should go, the correct addresses, hours and landmarks);

·
in
the
“Your Guides”
section, the entire world of public services are
organized by subject matter and many vade-mecums are available for
understanding the rights and duties of the citizen.

There are also sections
dedicated to searching for employment, to finding many different kinds of forms,
and to setting out the pages of institutional sites which make material of
public interest available, as well as newsletters, FAQs and, finally, a
service, edited by
Il Sole 24 Ore
, thanks to which the citizen can ask
for helpful advice via e-mail and receive an answer within 15 days. The start
of the portal coincided with the activation of the “
gov.it
” domain,
which – as the Ministro per l’Innovazione e le Tecnologie (Minister for Innovation
and Technologies) declared – “will have the scope of allowing citizens to
easily identify the sites of the Administrations and of guaranteeing the
security and reliability of the information found on them”. This Web Site is
continuously improving, providing citizens with more and more advanced
services.

Among
the institutional portals,
NormeInRete
holds a very important
position, but we describe it later on. Here we shall only mention a few private
sites.

Figure
1
: Home Page of
the Portal “Italia.gov.it”

1.2. Private Portals

1)
“
FiloDiritto
”:
this is one of the most recent sites in the legal domain. It is very rich and
well organized and is useful not only to the lawyer but also to the citizen; it
can be queried in five languages and it is also provided with an advanced
search engine. The simplicity of its interface increases its appeal.

The following are among its
services:

·
“FAQ”
:
with the
answers to
questions of general legal interest;

·
“Legal Utilities”
:
aids
directed at lawyers and ordinary users, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias,
glossaries, public registers, company searches, software for public notaries,
Euro-converters, forms, price lists and so on;

·
“
Reviews
”
: in this section, subdivided into two large areas of
books and journals, the user can find the most relevant recently published law
publications. The idea is to provide a dual service, for both books and for
journals: on the one hand, there is a complete and up-to-date list of the
latest publications; on the other, an annotated anthology which picks out,
within the
mare magnum
of law publishing, the most interesting
contributions and in this context inserts the reviews written by those
collaborating with the site;

·
“
Links
”:
to Italian and foreign sites of legal interest, as well as useful addresses for
lawyers and users;

·
“Law Firms”
:
found on the Web,
subdivided by region, province and subject matter (with an advanced search
engine);

·
“Legal Forums”
:
Newsgroups (registration is not compulsory but open and
free-of-charge);

·
“Court Decisions”
: reported by various parties and considered by
those responsible for the site worthy of publication for the topical interest
of the material dealt with, for its complexity, or for the outcome of the
decision; in effect, this section offers a space for cases which have not as
yet been dealt with in specialised law journals with any particular attention.

This Web Site, actually one of the best
Italian legal Web resources, has been deeply modified whether graphically or
from the point of view of the contents.

The HomePage is divided into three
sections. The central section contains news related to the latest significant
Court decisions, recent articles of legal literature, news about Courses and
Conferences, quotations from famous literary works of legal interest,
information about the present database and the possibility of querying the old
database. In the left section of the HomePage we can consult – by means
of a simple search, or an advanced search, or an analytical index – a
large database containing statutes, sentences, articles of legal literature and
praxis in relation to private Law, commercial Law, social Law, obligations and
contracts Law, labour and security Law, privacy Law and civil liability, new
technologies Law, and information and communication Law. Among the legal
utilities we can find: links to legal texts (statutes, sentences), registration
of suits, administrative appeals processes, dictionaries, encyclopedias,
deontological codes
and other utilities (jurisdictional bodies, registration fees,
forensic tariffs, Law-List, firms databases, tax calculation, etc.). In the
right section of
the
HomePage i
t is
possible to enter the Newsletter, to consult online Law offices, to contribute
to the Site, to link to the section “ArteDiritto”, devoted to the different
forms of art that are interested in Law.

Figure 2
: Home Page
of the Portal “FiloDiritto”

2) “
IusSeek
”.
It defines itself as “a legal newspaper, search engine and portal but, above
all, a community”. The site was created by “IusOnDemand”
,
already cited
above with regard to intelligent agents. It is one of the main portals for
lawyers and is furnished with various and sophisticated tools for research
(amongst which a search engine with a proprietary database exclusively
dedicated to the Law: there are several tens of thousands of indexed pages)
broadly ranging among the different branches of the Law.

·
“
Forum
”
(managed by civil lawyers for civil lawyers) in which
experts in the subject matter present their considerations with regard to the
various interpretations of the Law;

·
“
Collaboration
”
: the user can write a message free-of-charge to
have it disseminated via the Internet.

·
“
IusVision
”:
it calls itself an “expert system” and it allows the user to search by choosing
the type of information source on which to carry out the search, for example,
on documents, laws, decisions, or news. However, these groups are not well
defined. Legal authority, for example, is spread over more than one section and
it is, therefore, not possible to make an accurate search. It is also generally
suggested that the user should search other information sources, such as
commercial search engines, the “
Books
” section (limited to a selection,
the criteria for which are not documented), or the Official Gazette, etc. The
search on general search engines is filtered through the automatic insertion of
the word “Law” linked to the term used in the query, in this way restricting
the search field. It also offers the possibility for different kinds of
searches: simple, advanced or combined searches;

·
“
Dictionary
”: a database created interactively with the
user, based on the free association of legal institutions
.

Figure 3
: Home Page of the
Portal “IusSeek”

2.
Search Engines

1) “
Cicerone
”:
proposed by the journal/portal “Diritto e Diritti”, in its first version it was
a
sui generis
tool, because, while defining itself as a search engine,
it did not allow the user to search by terms but only by the document
references; furthermore, it did not act autonomously (that is, on its own
index) but on the indexes constructed by other search engines to which it
addressed the suitably adapted search string, then gathering the results from
it. In other words, it behaved like an intermediary between users and the real
search engines. Subsequently, the Journal created a
new version
which constituted a proper search engine. However, the earlier version also remains
operational. “Cicerone” is worth remembering because it is one of the few
private search engines which are available free of charge with the legal
domain.

3)
“
Arancia OutLaw
” - Among the recent
legal search engines “
Arancia OutLaw
” is directed to students of Law, Lawyers and
other professionals in the field. Only documents and Web pages of legal
interest are indexed. The site HomePage is very simple, containing a dialogue
window provided with some fundamental options, such as “Help”, “Legal
Comments”, and “Suggestions”. There is no notice in the site about the
developers of it. The data contained in the “Arancia OutLaw” search engine
result from the analysis of Web pages public or at disposal of private
citizens. Data selection and sorting are determined by algorithms.

Figure 6
: Home Page of the
Search Engine “Arancia OutLaw”

3. Guides

Law Web Guides are principally
consulting instruments. Many of institutional sites and online reviews contain
them.

1) “
Diritto Italia
” (Law Italy) - Created
by the Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG) of the
Italian National Research Council (CNR), “
Diritto
Italia”
is a database which identifies references to materials and
information of legal and administrative interest existing on Italian Web sites.
The database, last updated on November 2002, is organized in documentary units
corresponding to the individual types of material taken into consideration: as
a result, each site may appear in more than one survey form according to the
richness of the documentation possessed. The survey form contains a lot of
information whose objective is to orient the user in retrieving the data he/she
is interested in. The information relates to providers, access (free-of-charge
or for a fee), the type of material (Laws, Jurisprudence, Legal literature,
etc.), the ambit (national, regional, European Community, etc.), the
documentary unit (full text, references, etc.), the manner in which the data is
presented (list, database), whether there is a search engine or not, and the
date of the survey.

Three solutions have
been prepared for those wishing to carry out a search:

·
two groups of
“pre-packaged” searches: one relating to every single category of provider and
the other to each type of material;

·
a “direct search”,
which allows the user to use one or more terms combined with the available
operators, which operate on the level of the entire form;

·
a “guided search” with
a query form that is divided into free or menu-based search fields with already
explicit values;

“Diritto Italia” represents an example
of methodology. Actually the “Diritto Italia” database isn’t up-to-date; in
fact, the principal purpose of the project was to provide a model of document
research and retrieval on the Web, hoping that other operators go on with this
kind of enterprise. It is right to point out that the updating of these Guides
is crucial for their efficiency since URLs and contents of the Web sites
continually change, while the cooperation process, that is at the base of the
Web philosophy, is still now disregarded.

Figure
7
: Home Page of the Guide “Diritto
Italia”

2) “
Documentazione di Fonte Pubblica in Rete
” (DFP –
“Public Source Documentation on the Web”:
is a
very reliable guide, created by the Associazione Italiana Biblioteche (AIB
–
Italian Libraries Association
) and created with the objective of
providing a support for Italian librarians and documentarians so they would be
able to orient themselves in identifying public information available on the
Web
.
DFP is a structured list of Italian
Internet resources which makes public
information available, focusing
special attention on legislative information and legal information in general
.
It is also integrated with the discussion list of the Italian
AIB-CUR librarians
, in the sense
that it gathers reports transmitted on that list.

DFP is organized in
three sectors:

·
General
Documentation
:
Official Gazettes, Official Bulletins of the Regions, general collections
of legislation, lists and services of legislative amendments, jurisprudence
files, services updating jurisprudence, general statistics, legal information
sites;

·
Sectoral
Documentation
:
with an especially thorough selection, given the very large number
of potentially relevant resources. Public bodies are prevalent (each sector
presents one or more national body of reference) but there are also private and
commercial sites when they give information of a public source available;

·
Digest
of public sites
:
constituted by a simple list of URLs relating to public
institutions subdivided into wide categories. The bodies are represented up to
the level of the region. For provinces, municipalities and other local bodies,
reference is made to already existing digests.

Figure
8
: Home Page
of the Web site “DFP”

3)
Associazione Italiana Biblioteche (AIB-Web)
- The AIB is the
professional association of Italian librarians. Founded in 1930, AIB is the
only general library association in Italy, the only national association member
of IFLA and by far the oldest and largest association from this field in Italy.
The site provides information about libraries and pertinent services (online
catalogues, calendars of events, inventories in the field of training and
labour, directories of products and services, discussion groups). The “Internet
Guide” section – that contains directories of Italian and foreign
(English, in particular) Guides, Hand Books, News Bulletins, Forums and Mailing
Lists – is worthy of pointing out since it gives useful suggestions on
how to use Web research tools (search engines and metaengines) in the right
way. Every Web resource is described by means of a Form containing its name,
URL, and a brief description.

Figure
9
:
Home Page of the Web site “AIB-Web”

4. Sites of legal interest

Apart
from these resources aimed at retrieving legal material and access to the
sources of Italian law or parts of them, there is now a great variety of
institutional or private online sites, structured as portals rich in
information and services.

4.1. Parliament, Government and
Ministries

With
the premise that not only the Parliament and Government, but also all of the
Ministries’ sites, can be found on the Web, we shall only concentrate on those
we consider worthy of special attention.

This is the official site of the two Houses
of Parliament: the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic. It
offers a database of Italian laws starting from the XIII Legislature, which can
be searched in chronological order, by type and by subject matter, based on the
TESEO
[iv]
system of classification. The most requested laws, bills that have
been passed but not promulgated or published, and decree laws in the course of
conversion into law can also be retrieved. There is also a database of
legislative decrees (which implement delegated law, EC Directives, or special
Statutes), which the user can search on the Server of the Chamber of Deputies
through a search engine. The site of Parliament is divided into two sectors:
the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic.

Apart from providing information
about its role, latest news and press releases, about the work underway as well
as initiatives and events, the site of the Chamber of Deputies is especially
important for its databases. In particular:

the database
related to acts of Parliamentary control and policy trends that allows the text
and data about the treatment of questions, interpellations, motions,
resolutions, agendas both of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the
Republic to be searched and queried. In this new version, it substitutes the
earlier database known as “Sindacato ispettivo” (Parliamentary Questions and
Commissions). The following are the characteristics of the database: the
user-friendliness and intuitive nature in the use of the database of regional laws
which contains all the laws in full text of the Italian Regions and Autonomous
Provinces from their constitution. The original nucleus, entirely created by
the Chamber of Deputies, was made available on the Web through the joint
efforts of the Chamber of Deputies, the Supreme Court of Cassation and the
Regional Councils. Since 1998, the legislative texts have been directly
supplied by the Regions and the Autonomous Provinces. Normative references of
the laws are provided by the Supreme Court of Cassation, while the Library of
the Chamber of Deputies takes care of the overall management and updating of
the database.

Beside
providing information about its role, members, work, and guides, the Senate of
the Republic site provides a database of bills, which can be searched by number
or through a guided search (on the basis of the TESEO classification) on the
XIII and XIV Legislatures; moreover bills of previous Legislatures can be
searched.

Above all, it is
necessary, in relation to the sites of the Ministries, to underline that they
constitute an important source of information for the legal and administrative
worlds. As we have already mentioned, each Ministry can be found on the Web
with its own site, often divided into several sectors, starting with the
Prime
Minister’s Office
, which not only provides more general information
and services, but also gives news about the course of Government provisions,
which is updated on a weekly basis.

Almost in their
entirety, the sites of the Ministries are presented as Portals with a variety
of very important information and services (see, in
Appendices
,
paragraphs 1.1.3., 1.1.4.).

The “Ministry of the Economy and Finance” consists
of four Departments: Dipartimento del Tesoro (DT), Dipartimento Ragioneria
Generale dello Stato (RGS), Dipartimento Amministrazione Generale e dei Servizi
(DAGS), Dipartimento per le Politiche Fiscali (DPF).
The
MEF homepage
, contains information on
the structure and role of the Ministry, and provides information about the
Taxation Agencies, the CIPE, the Administration of State Monopolies, and the
like, and a list of links – organized by type – to institutional
sites. The
DPF
homepage
, is under the Department for Fiscal Policies and is divided
into numerous sections.

Besides press releases, dossiers on
specific subjects and guides, studies and fiscal statistics, exchange rates,
forms, due dates for the payment of taxation, online taxation, journals and
in-depth studies, the documentation sector offers a database of taxation
documentation prepared by the “
Centro Ricerche e Documentazione Economica e
Finanziaria
” (CeRDEF - Economics and Finance Documentation and
Research Center) containing tax legislation enacted after the reform of 1972,
also prior legislation if still in force, European Community legislation,
administrative practices (circulars, resolutions, press releases) produced by
the Financial Administration for the interpretation and proper enforcement of
the legislation, and finally the Italian and European Community Jurisprudence
on taxation including the opinions of the Advisory Council for the application
of the anti-evasion rules. It also offers a useful sector relating to services,
including a guide to the services of the Departments, the calculation of road
tax, the duplication of the Tax Code, information on taxation commissions and
so on. It also contains a list of sites organized by type and a software sector
on fiscal, cadastral and customs matters.

The
Ministry of Justice
site has a section
dedicated to children (Central Office and Local Offices, Adoptions, Rescue of
Minors, Projects and Statistics). The “Legislation” and “Jurisprudence”
sections contain a selection of legislation and recent cases prepared by the
Internet Editorial Board of the Computer Centre of the Italian Supreme Court of
Cassation. From the site of the Ministry, the user can also access the Computer
Centre of the Supreme Court, which provides an online service for the
consultation of texts of legal interest collected and organized in specialized
databases (30 databases storing over 4 million documents).

Access to the
databases, regulated by law (DPR 21.5.1981, no. 322), requires a online link to
the Computer Centre’s database through the “ItalgiureFind” retrieval system
adopted by the Supreme Court or through the “Easy Find” interface. The link is
granted free-of-charge to constitutional, judicial and administrative organs of
the State, to judges and to State prosecutors and attorneys; all other users
pay an annual subscription fee for access. Currently the Italgiure-Web system
is available on the
Internet
at the site
, but
is only accessible to
ordinary judges while awaiting new ministerial regulations on how private users
should be linked to the system.

The site of the “
Autorità garante
della concorrenza e del mercato
” is very interesting, as it offers,
amongst other information, an interesting database on competition with
decisions on agreements in restraint of trade, abuse of dominant positions,
companies amalgamation or divisions, together with opinions and reports,
investigations, forms and news.

The “
Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato
”,
which is in charge of printing and distributing (also with computer-based
tools) the Official Gazette and other State publications, offers the user the
possibility of accessing free-of-charge the last 60 Gazettes and, through the
Ispolitel-Guritel services, makes its many databases available for a fee:
Guritel (Official Gazette), Comitel (Commercial Databases), Albitel
(Professional Rolls), Cetel (Official Journal of the European Community),
Concorsi (Public Competitive Examinations), Publitel (Publications of the
Public Administration), Farmatel (Pharmaceutical Databases), Tributi (Taxation
Database) and Supplements.

4.3. Local Public Bodies and Civic
Networks

Among the regions, we would like to
focus on the
Emilia-Romagna region
for its
particularly innovative use of the Web. Not only does this region give the
user the possibility to search the full texts of the resolutions of the
Regional Council, but it has also created Ermes, which presents itself as an
access point able to offer an information path, a guide and a dialogue with
users.

4.4. Courts and Judicial Offices

We have already described the site
of the Italian Supreme Court in relation to the Ministry of Justice.

The site of the
Italian
Constitutional Court
, presented in five languages, not only provides
useful information about the offices and the judges of the Court starting from
1956, monthly reviews, press conferences and the legislative framework of
reference, but it also enables the user to search the “
Massime
”
(abstracts of the Court’s sentences) from 1956 and the full text sentences for
recent decisions (since 1999).

On this matter, it is,
however, helpful to refer to another site, because it is more complete and
managed by the same official site, namely the
Constitutional Court online
,
co-ordinated by Prof. Pasquale Costanzo, whose database stores all the Court’s
decisions and orders dating from 1999. A search may be carried out on the
details of the decision, by key words or through the terms which the parties,
the court or the subject matter dealt with may refer to. The decisions are in
full text. In the part dedicated to “Sources”, the legislative framework is set
out and, in the part dedicated to “Research”, the user is able to participate
in a public “Forum”. It should also be noted that there is a large number of
links to Constitutions and Constitutional Courts throughout the world.

The
Administrative Justice
site is devoted to the “
Consiglio di
Stato
” (Council of State) and to the TAR
–
“
Tribunali
Amministrativi Regionali
” (Regional Administrative Courts). It has a
database containing the decisions of the Council of State and the Regional
Administrative Courts (including the Regional Court of Administrative Justice
situated in Trento and the Autonomous Division for the Province of Bolzano). On
this site, the user can generally find, with some exceptions, decisions
published after 1 October 2000, and the most important opinions dating from
September 2000.

The “
Tar online
”
(OnLine Regional Administrative Court) of Catania
allows the user to search the database of the
judgments of the Regional Administrative Court of Catania. The most significant
decisions deposited between 1 September 1996 and 31 May 2001 are currently
available.

The
sites of the “
Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura
” (Superior Council
of Judges), the taxation tribunals (Regional and Provincial Taxation
Commissions), the Italian Military Justice system, the Auditor’s Court and many
peripheral judicial offices (Courts, Public Prosecutor’s Offices, Courts of
Appeal) are also online.

4.5. European Institutions

The portal of the
European Union
,
accessible in eleven languages, provides the user with a great deal of
documentation on what the European Union is, how it functions, and how to live
and interact with it.

4.6. Universities and Research
Bodies

To get general information about universities,
their structures and faculties, the user can search the online database
Cerca
Università
, or else he/she can search through a special form by
using various parameters (University, Faculty, Region or key words).

Here, we shall look, as
an example, at the Faculty of Law of the
University of Catania
, which presents
interesting initiatives online, such as
Tar online
(which we mentioned
earlier in the section dedicated to judicial organs) and
Labour Web
, a
virtual documentation centre on the evolution of labour law, industrial
relations and the social state in the European Union, and at the
Faculty of
Law of Trento
, which hosts “The Cardozo Law Bulletin”, the first
European University electronic journal.

With regard to
Research Institutes, we feel obliged to mention the “
Istituto di
Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica
” (ITTIG –
Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques) of the “
Consiglio
Nazionale delle Ricerche
” (CNR – Italian National Research
Council) born in 2002, following the rationalization process of the network of
the CNR Institutes, which, among other things, lead to the unification of the “
Istituto
per la Documentazione Giuridica
” (IDG – Institute for Legal
Documentation) and the “
Centro di Studio sul Diritto Romano e Sistemi
Giuridici
” (CSDRSG – Centre of Studies on Roman Law and Legal
systems).

The databases and the guides to
which users have access free-of-charge are especially important on the site in
question. In particular, these include the following.

·
“
VIPD
– Vita Indipendente per le persone
con Disabilità
”
(Independent Life for Persons with
Disabilities: national and regional legislation, jurisprudence and lists of Web
sites of interest in the field of the independent life of persons with disabilities,
edited by Raffaello Belli);

The Web site “
CNF
– Consiglio Nazionale Forense
” (National Bar
Council) puts the Forensic Deontological Code online and enables the user to
retrieve, through the jurisprudence related to the CNF, opinions, circulars,
events, the Bar’s activities, proposals, the history of its members, the
calendar of Court sittings and annual reports. It also provides information,
reviews and lists of sites of interest for lawyers.

“
CNN
– Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato
”
(National Council of Public Notaries) is divided into various subject headings,
rich in information: “the Public Notary” (who he/she is, the cost of notarial
deeds, studies of the Italian Notary Profession, Public Notaries and
information technology, etc.), “Private Parties” (buying a house, loans, gifts,
successions and wills, the family, foreigners in Italy), “Non Profit
Organizations” (recognized and non-recognized associations, foundations, legal
persons, committees, charities), “Companies” (the general characteristics of a
company, the contract, types of companies, taxation aspects, enterprises),
“Training” (the State – Public Notary relationship, notarial procedures,
schools for notaries, the open examinations for notaries, their appointment and
the exercise of the profession), and “News”. A database of different kinds of
documentation including legislation is also online. There is also a service on
how to find a public notary, studies and research, conferences and congresses,
and the Council’s journal
CNN Attività
(CNN Activities), with some of
its issues online. The site also has an internal search engine.

“
ANM
– Associazione Nazionale Magistrati
”
(National Association of Judges:), founded in 1906, numbers among its members
8,284 judges of a total of 8,886 judges in Italy on active service and it is a
founding member of the “International Association of Judges”.

“
OUA
– Organismo Unitario dell’Avvocatura
Italiana
”
(Unitary Organism of the Italian Bench and Bar)
represents the structure – direct emanation of the National Bar Congress
– where all the institutions and bar associations converge for the
purpose of expressing the thoughts of the Bench and the Bar on all the most
important issues relating to the Justice and the legal profession, whilst
respecting the autonomy of each component. The site provides online information
about Congresses and Conferences, documents, news, reviews and press releases,
and many articles from the journal “
Giustizia italiana
”
(Italian
Justice).

“
AIGA
– Associazione Italiana Giovani
Avvocati
” (Italian Association of Young Lawyers), in the section
“Areas”, furnishes documentation on Administrative Law, Civil Law, Legal
education, Forensic Order, Judicial System, Criminal Law, and provides a space
dedicated to European Law and the Protection of Young Lawyers.

“
U.C.P.I
– Unione delle Camere Penali
Italiane
” (Union of the Italian Criminal Chambers) is the
official site of the Italian Criminal Chambers; it contains news, forums,
documents, the list of Italian prisons, penitentiaries and public welfare
services (divided by region).

“
Consulta per la Giustizia Europea dei Diritti
dell’uomo
”
(Council for European Justice on Human
Rights), set up on 13 June 1986, has the scope of making the professional and
cultural associations of lawyers and judges in Italy aware of the instruments
for protecting human rights, guaranteed by international rules, in particular,
the procedural rules for presenting individual cases before the European Court
of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, in order to denounce violations of the European
Convention on Human Rights which may have been committed by the Italian State.

“
A.I.C.
- Associazione Italiana dei costituzionalisti
”
(Italian Association of Constitutional Lawyers) originates out of the
initiative of a group of experts and aims “to encourage in-depth research into
Constitutional Law and the methods for teaching it, promoting and co-ordinating
both meetings between experts and common research”. The A.I.C. is a member of
the International Association of Constitutional Law; the relative site not only
presents a newsletter but also debates, news, materials (including conference
proceedings, the European Constitutional Convention, legislative acts, special
measures, forecasts about the future, and bills), new publications, and a list
of Italian and foreign links of interest.

4.8. Private Initiative Sites

“
Iusimpresa
” is a bibliographical observatory on
the world of the economy, which can be searched in six languages (Italian, English,
French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese). Its objective is to offer a rapid,
complete and user-friendly tool which, on the basis of a selection made at the
source, provides (with updating made possible through the availability of the
material) the bibliographical details of legal literature regarding the Law of
Economics, published since January 2001. The main idea is to realize a
“transversal collection” of legal and technical data in order to monitor the
many “branches” of the law (Civil Law, Administrative Law, Banking Law, Labour
Law, Commercial Law, Criminal Law, European Community Law, etc.). Not only the
section dedicated to news is interesting, but also the section regarding books,
which – thanks to the publishing houses permission – enables users
to browse summaries and tables of contents.

4.9. Publishing Houses

Among the publishing
houses specialized in the legal sector, we would like to mention:

2) “
Giuffré
”
gives access, always for a subscription fee, to the Iuris databases (national,
regional and provincial legislation, the Codes, the jurisprudence of the
Supreme Court of Cassation, Regional Administrative Courts, the Council of
State, etc.) and also to “
Diritto & Giustizia
” (Law and Justice)
online, and the journals “
Giurisprudenza di merito on-Line
”
and “
Il
Foro amministrativo on-Line
”
.
The
Giuffré
catalogue, which is also available in a CD-ROM version and online, currently
contains more than eight thousand titles with an annual increment of over four
hundred new titles. Giuffré also publishes about sixty law journals and legal
databases. The online catalogue is updated daily with data on all the volumes
published, both those currently on the market and those in print in the past

3) “
Il Sole
24 ore
”, largely dedicated to the world of the economy, makes an
important contribution to the legal sector. It provides services, texts,
periodicals and many offline and online databases which are distributed against
payment of a subscription fee.

The
following are among the most important services in the legal sector:

A) “
Lex24
” constitutes the
legal-legislative database of “
Il Sole 24 Ore
”, which the user can
search either on the Internet or on DVD-ROM, through which he/she can retrieve,
quickly and in an intuitive way, all the
Legislation
in its current
form, with the
Jurisprudence
referring to it, the
Notes
taken
from professional journals and the
Questions
of the “Answers from the
Expert” column.

The database of “
Lex24
”
is
in constant evolution; it can be searched at any time and is updated in real
time on the basis of the latest amendments taking place daily. In particular,
with regard to the legislation, it makes the following available to the user:

·
State laws and decrees
published in the Official Gazette from 1860 up until today in their current
form;

·
the Civil Code,
Criminal Code, Code of Civil Procedure, Code of Criminal Procedure, Code of
Navigation, Road Code, Code of Military Procedure in Peacetime, Code of
Military Procedure in Wartime, together with their implementing provisions;

·
European Community
Law: decisions, directives and regulations of the European Community issued
before and after the Treaty on the European Union signed in Maastricht on 7
February 1992, which have been received into the Italian legal order;

·
Regional Law: a wide
selection of provisions passed by the Regions constituted under ordinary or
special Statute and the Autonomous Provinces, published in the Official
Bulletins since 2002;

·
Judgments
of the Authorities;

·
a
wide selection of judgments of the Constitutional Court, the Civil and Criminal
Divisions of the Supreme Court of Cassation, the Council of State, the main
lower Courts and the European Court of Justice;

·
a review of the
Notes
taken from the professional journals of “
Il Sole 24 Ore
”
(“Guide
to the Law”, “Legislative Guide”, “Guide to Local Authorities”, “Guide to
Employment”, “Company Law and Practice”, “Environment and Security”, “The
Building Industry and Land Use”, etc.);

·
the questions of
citizens and the replies of experts taken from the column in “
Il Sole 24 Ore
”
entitled “Answers from the Expert”;

·
finally,
there is a special section which contains the latest News regarding legislation
or News selected and commented on by the Editors.

B) “
Guida al Diritto
” (Guide to
the Law), which offers subscribers of the weekly of the same name the
possibility of navigating free-of-charge in the site, in order to search:

·
the “
Massimario
”
(Collection of the Courts’ Holdings in Cases): database which collects together
all the Courts’ findings in cases published in the journal from 1994 until
today;

·
the Four Codes of
the “
Guida al Diritto
”, structured in the same way as in the paper-based
volume and available in pdf format, with all the legislative amendments and
updates and questions of constitutional legitimacy occurring throughout the
year and in-put in real time;

·
the
periodical newsletter: produced by “
Lex24
”, weekly and/or monthly with
the most important news about legislation and jurisprudence;

·
the
“
Guida al Diritto
” also enables the user to display the weekly issue of
the same
“Guida al Diritto”
in advance with respect to the paper-based
copy.

4) “
IPSOA
”,
which, for a subscription, makes available to the user a large number of
databases of legislation, jurisprudence on taxation, Company Law and Labour Law
available on the Web. It also furnishes numerous online services: “
Previdenza
Web
”, regarding social security; “
ABCLavoro
”
on Labour Law; “
Condoni
and concordato 2004
” on taxation remissions and settlements; “
CAAF
Services
”
for professionals and companies regarding taxation and
VAT; “IPSOA
-Camere
” providing access to the databases of the Chambers of
Commerce; IPSOA
Daily
) and a catalogue of all its products accessible
through various search strategies, such as a very detailed subject index, a
practical menu set out according to the type of product and, finally, classical
full text and advanced searches
.

5) “
Simone
”
contains useful services (mailing list) and a great deal of information. The
catalogue, made available by the publishing house, enables the user to consult
the electronic cards relating to over 750 published volumes updated in real
time. Simone allows its users to
search its
Law Codes free-of-charge: Constitution, Civil Code, Criminal Code, Code of
Civil Procedure, Code of Criminal Procedure, annotated and explanatory Treaties
of European Community, as well as a large number of Dictionaries (Legal, Roman
Law, European Union legal issues, Economic, History of Italian and European
Law, Accounting and Finance, Law relating to Condominium, Canon and
Ecclesiastical Law).

4.10. Online Law Journals

1) “
Diritto & Diritti
”
(Law
and Rights), historically one of the first to appear on the Web and also one of
the richest, having officially come into being in 1996. Initially divided into
frames, more recently it has been the object of a restyling. Today, the site
displays a navigation menu subdivided into two large sections: “Legal
Research”, which directs the user to the indexes for legislation,
jurisprudence, legal literature and administrative acts, and “Legal Material”,
which contains a very broad list of materials going from lists of the Law
Faculties to sites of Law firms, to lists of Law journals, legal sites and
contributions of legal literature. It was the first site to produce a
rudimentary kind of retrieval system called “Cicerone”, which today has been
redesigned as a real search engine (see the description in the section relating
to this argument). Finally, it provides a newsletter giving the user updated
information.

2) “
IusSeek
” - as we have already
mentioned in the section devoted to “Portals”, this site describes itself as “a
legal newspaper, search engine and portal but, above all, a community”.

3)
“
The
Cardozo Electronic Law Bulletin
” is the first European
University electronic journal, directed by Professors Mattei and Monateri.
Apart from containing a series of important articles and contributions, it
presents the annotated Italian Civil Code, the Italian Constitution, and lists
of Italian and international sites.

The following can be listed among the
typically specialized journals:

1) “
InterLex
” is a periodical which
appears several times a week. It contains general and scientific information
and information related to the legal world. It is, therefore, a proper
electronic journal, among the most prestigious within the Italian legal
panorama on the Web, with many articles regarding legal literature, organized by
subject matter or argument through a chronological index.

2) “
Italian Labour Law e-Journal
”
is a journal which falls within the
sphere of interest which basically coincides with that of the site
Italian Labour Law on line
where it is to be found: Italian labour
law, in the traditional sense including industrial relations, employer-employee
relations, and social security law, from their domestic and international
viewpoints as well as international and comparative labour law.

3) “
Gnosis Online
” is the journal of
“intelligence and professional culture”, the first issue of which was published
in 1995, originated with the objective, amongst other things, of introducing
new forms of communication inside and outside
SISDE
(“
Italian Intelligence and Security Service
”).
It also portrays itself as a qualified place for reflection and in-depth study,
unique in the Italian editorial panorama, on issues related to intelligence and
national security. The Journal publishes essays, forums, interviews, articles,
curious historical anecdota, book reviews and bibliographical notes, reports of
interventions by important persons from the world of politics, culture and the
institutions. It has also edited a full and systematic collection of the
Italian and foreign documentation in the sector (reports of parliamentary and
governmental organs, bills regarding intelligence bodies, legislation and
jurisprudence of interest). The Journal also publishes the proceedings of the
numerous cultural initiatives promoted by the Training School of the “Italian
Intelligence and Security Service”.

4) “
Diritto & Questioni pubbliche – Rivista di Filosofia del
Diritto e cultura giuridica
”
(Law and Public Questions
– Journal of the Philosophy of Law and Legal Culture)
is divided into two sections. The first hosts’ articles
and other contributions on a specialized topic are chosen each issue by the
editorial board. The second section is subdivided into three columns: the first
is dedicated to sites of legal and philosophical interest, with links to
Italian and foreign online journals, universities and search engines. The
second reports events, such as conferences, debates or the publication of
books. The third contains notes on Italian and/or foreign court decisions,
reviews of articles and books of legal and philosophical interest, as well as
any critical notes on Italian or foreign constitutional or ordinary
jurisprudence.

5) “
Studiumfori
”
This journal deals with
civil law and procedure and tax law and procedure. It is structured in four
sectors: tax law, rent and condominium law, family law and administrative
penalties.

6)
“
Jus e Internet
”
is a journal edited by Gianluigi Ciacci. It is divided into several sections
including: legal informatics, case law news, in-depth legal studies, and Parliamentary
information. Apart from a wide range of documentation, the “File” section
permits the user to consult on-line the
Manuale del diritto dell’informatica
[Manual of Computer Law] by Prof. Ettore Giannantonio, who dedicated many years
to the study of this topic.

7) “
Lexambiente
”
(Environmental Law) is a journal edited by Luca Ramacci, a Public Prosecutor’s
Assistant of Venice. It is rich in information, case law and legislation on the
environment contributing to the discussion on this topic, and also has a
newsletter which keeps users up-to-date on what is happening in the field.

4.11. Law Libraries

Many libraries, especially if they
are of a certain importance, like university libraries, have transformed their
catalogues into databases, usually making them available to the user free-of-charge.
These catalogues come under the name of OPACs (Online Public Access
Catalogues). OPACs represent a valuable source of information, enabling the
user to retrieve information from his/her computer and allowing him/her to
identify where the volumes can be found quickly and in more than one library.

There are now also groups of these under
the same organization which has created
collective
catalogues or MetaOPACs. By way of example, we can cite the virtual
catalogue
Cultural
Site of the Tuscany Region
, which permits this type of search
(in simple or advanced mode) within a large number of Libraries in the
Provinces and in the Universities within the Region.

For a full search on the OPACs and
MetaOPACs we suggest:

1) SBN online is the “
Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale in linea
”
(National
Library Service online).
SBN
Index is the collective catalogue of over 1,000 Italian Libraries which have
joined the “National Library Service”. It is a network of Italian Libraries
created by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage in collaboration with the Regions
and Universities; currently, it provides access to the bibliographical news
which is periodically downloaded from the databases of the SBN Index: the
Modern Book, the Antique Book and Music. At present, the catalogue contains
about 9 million localizations and 4.5 million bibliographical descriptions.

2) Digest of the Italian OPACs of the “
Associazione Italiana Biblioteche
” (Italian Libraries
Association) provides exhaustive lists of Italian Libraries, divided by type
(Public Libraries, State Libraries, Ecclesiastical Libraries, School Libraries,
University Libraries, Research Institute Libraries and other Libraries) within
the type by geographical coverage. This digest, created and initially maintained
by Riccardo Ridi, has since February 1999 automatically generated and updated
from the database of the MetaOPAC Azalai Italiano (MAI), managed by the joint
AIB-CILEA editorial board.

1. The NIR –
“Norme in Rete” (Italian Legislation on the Net) Project

The “
Norme In Rete
” –
NIR
(“Italian
Legislation on the Net”) Portal deserves attention because it is both the major
institutional portal for Italian and Community legislation, and because of the
innovative techniques it uses.

Figure 8
: Home Page of the
Portal “
NIR –Norme In Rete
”

The initiative falls
within the framework of the reform of the Italian Public Administration aimed at
guaranteeing transparency and simplification in its relationship with citizens.
To better understand its importance, it is worthwhile mentioning that, in
November 1999, the Assembly of the Italian Chamber of Deputies passed a
resolution regarding Government policy in which the
NIR
Project was
given the highest priority within the ambit of initiatives for administrative
simplification.

·
The
Project, financed by the “
Autorità per l’Informatica nella Pubblica
Amministrazione – AIPA
”
[v]
(“Authority for Information Technology in the Public Administration”),
on
the proposal of the Ministry of Justice which jointly with AIPA has
co-ordinated it, intends to aid and simplify the retrieval of legislative and
legal documentation made accessible, through the Internet, by Institutional
Bodies. European Institutions, the Italian Parliament and the Constitutional
Organs, Independent Authorities, Local Authorities, National Bodies, Judicial
Bodies, Universities, Research Institutes and Professional Orders are taking
part in the Project. It is open to the participation of all Public Institutions
and Administrations which, on their Web sites, make legislative-type
documentation available; it also avails itself of the technical-scientific
contribution of the ITTIG (“
Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione
Giuridica
”
– “Institute of Legal Information Theory and
Techniques”) of the CNR (“
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
” –
“Italian National Research Council”) of Florence and of the Inter-university
Consortium CINECA (“
Consorzio Interuniversitario per il Calcolo Automatico
dell’Italia Nord Orientale
” – “Inter-university Consortium for
Automatic Calculus of North-east Italy”) of Bologna.

1.1. Search Functions and Online
Utilities

1)
“Textual Search” on
the more than 145.529 indexed documents (last updated: April 9, 2004);

2)
a more Advanced Search
uses the “Catalogue of Laws”, a database containing the relevant information
(title, date of promulgation, date of publication, number, type of provision,
Internet address if there is one, subject matter, etc.) regarding Italian State
provisions (about 44,325; last updated: April 2, 2004) with legislative
validity, published in the
“Gazzetta Ufficiale”
(“Official Gazette”)
from 1948 up until today;

3)
Online Services of the
Public Administration (in particular, it should be noted how this last service
is very rich and very useful even in a practical sense);

4)
Access to Specialized
Databases, to the Bills, and to the
“Gazzetta Ufficiale”
(last 60 days);

The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation was a pioneer in the sector:
through its “
Centro Elettronico di Documentazione
” - CED (“Electronic
Centre of Documentation”) it created for the first time a system that can be
evaluated as the best, on a European level and even on a global level, for the
mass of documentation and for the features of its information retrieval system.
The service was already activated in the early 1970’s, but only for a limited
number of Courts. From 1980 onwards, there was a gradual incrementation and
consolidation of the system and definition of the access modes, provided
free-of-charge for the Central Administrations and against payment for other
user groups.

Access to the consultation of the
databases, regulated by law (DPR 21/5/1981, No. 322), requires a link-up with
the database of the CED through the “
Italgiure-Find
” retrieval system
adopted by the Supreme Court or through the “
Easy-Find
” interface. The
links are made via Telnet (one of the services of the Web
[vi]
) or via “
Easy-Find
”, subject to
installation on the user’s personal computer. Only recently the new documentary
retrieval system in the database of the Supreme Court, called “
ItalgiureWeb
”,
has become available on the
Internet
.

At present, the possibility of consulting it is reserved only for
users who have the right to link up free-of-charge and it will be come into
effect through a gradual release organized by categories.

The
ItalgiureWeb documentation system includes 41 databases, with a total of over 4
million documents.

In particular, in the field of
international and European Community legislation there are:

1)
CONVES: full text of
the international agreements not subject to ratification (only the titles of
agreements ratified by law are stored);

2)
TITCON: particulars
of the international agreements in which Italy is a party and which are
currently in force;

3)
EURLEX:
full text of Community legislation (regulations, directives, decisions).

4)
EURVAR: this
database is subdivided into three sub-databases: a) EURPRE: full text of the
opinions expressed by Community organisms in the preparatory phase of the
procedure for drafting Community law; b) EURNAZ: particulars and sources of the
publication of the legislation with which Member States implement directives;
c) EURPAR: full text of the written and oral questions presented by Members of
the European Parliament to the Council or the Parliament starting from June
1979, the date of the first direct election.

In the field of national and
regional legislation there are:

1)
CODICI: current
text: a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure approved under D.P.R. 22 September
1988, No. 447; b) of the implementing, co-ordinating and transitional
provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure (D.LG. 28 July 1989, No. 271); c)
of the regulations bringing the Code of Criminal Procedure (Decree 30 September
1989, No. 334) into force; d) of the new Highway Code (D.LG. 30 April 1992, No.
285); e) of the regulations bringing into force and implementing the new
Highway Code (D.P.R. 16 December 1992, No.495);

2)
LEXS:
full text of the legislative measures and only the title of measures of
strictly administrative kind published in the Official Gazette from 1971 up
until now;

3)
LEXPRE:
full text of the legislative measures published from 1/1/1904 until 31/12/1970;

4)
TITLEX:
references to legislative measures (the title of the laws and decrees of which
the full text has been stored in the LEXPRE and LEXS databases and the title of
other measures amongst the most important published in the Official Gazette
from 1860 up until now);

5)
LEXR:
full text of the legislative measures of the Regions both under ordinary and
special statute published since 1947;

6)
ECO:
references and/or full text of measures of a legislative, administrative or
statistical kind on ecological and environmental matters;

7)
LAVORO:
full text of national collective employment contracts.

In the field of national, Community
and foreign jurisprudence there are:

1)
COSTMS: “
massime
”
(case abstracts or headnotes) of the rulings of the Constitutional Court;

2)
CIVILE: “
massime
”
of the rulings of the Civil Division of the Supreme Court;

3)
PENALE: “
massime
”
of the rulings of the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court;

4)
CONSTA: “
massime
”
of the decisions and opinions of the Council of State, Council of
Administrative Justice of the Council of the Region of Sicily and the Special
Commission;

5)
ACQUE: “
massime
”
of the rulings of the Supreme Tribunal of Public Waters and of Regional Water
Tribunals;

6)
TRIBUT: “
massime
”
of the rulings of the Central Taxation Commission;

7)
MILIT: “
massime
”
of the rulings of the Supreme Military Tribunal;

10)
MERITO: “
massime
”
of the rulings of the Magistrates’ Courts, Courts of Appeal, Courts of Assizes,
etc. (selection);

11)
COSTSN: full text of
the rulings of the Constitutional Court;

12)
EURIUS: full text of
the rulings of the European Court of Justice;

13)
LIBERT: “
massime
”
of the jurisprudence on the Human Rights Convention;

14)
ENLEX: “
massime
”
of the jurisprudence of the Member States of the European Union in the field of
the environment.

Ministerial circulars databases
include:

1)
CIR: Ministerial
circulars published in the Official Gazette since 1st January 1992;

2)
CIRMGG: circulars of
the Ministry of Justice;

3)
CIRPCM: circulars of
the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (since 1976);

4)
CSM: rulings of the
Italian Council of the Judiciary (circulars, resolutions, answers to questions
and opinions).

National and international legal
authority databases include:

1)
BID: abstracts of
Italian and foreign publications on “Computers and the Law”;

2)
BNI: bibliographical
information on books published in Italy as listed in the Italian National
Bibliography;

3)
BIGIUR:
bibliographical units relating to volumes acquired by the Central Law Library
of the Ministry of Justice;

4)
DOTTR: abstracts
relating to: a) Legal authority taken from specialized publications that can be
searched through the DoGi (“
Dottrina Giuridica
” – Italian Legal
Authority) sub-database (since 1970); b) Political and legal
de iure
condendo
debate taken from Italian daily newspapers and periodicals that can be
searched through the STOP (“
Stampa di Opinione
”) sub-database
(1975-1993);

5)
FIURIS: study and
interpretation of Roman Law sources. It is organized in two sub-databases that
can be searched independently: a) FIURIS: bibliographical references to contributions
published in the main European Roman Law journals; b) INDEX: indexes of “
Corpus
Iuris Civilis
”;

6)
RIV: bibliographical
details of law journals in which the decisions from which the “
massime
”
taken from the jurisprudence databases (
Civile
,
Penale
,
Costit
,
Consta
,
Cortec
) are published or noted. It also contains the titles
of articles of legal authority from 1975 up until now;

7)
CASLIB:
bibliographical details edited by the “
Libreria Casalini
” of Italian
works published abroad.

Figure 9:
Home Page of the “
ItalgiureWeb
”
documentation system

Information, documentation and
utility databases include:

1)
ALBO: contains, for
every lawyer or trainee lawyer registered on the roll, the data transmitted to
the National Bar Council;

2)
ARMI: description of
the arms registered in the National Catalogue of Common Fire Arms;

3)
CULTUR: list of registered
buildings under Law 1 June 1939, No.1089, sent to the Superintendency of
Architectural, Artistic, Historic and Environmental Heritage;

4)
SCHEMA: general
classification table for documents stored before 31 December 1988;

5)
SCHEMB: general
classification table for documents stored since 1989.

3. The Italian Legal Authority
Portal

This is one of the
tools being experimented with at ITTIG, the objective of which is to give
unified access to material relating to legal authority distributed on the Web
by different public or private, institutional, scientific and commercial
organizations to provide a series of specialist services (forums, distribution
of documents, data interchange, etc.). It is also to create the maximum
integration with the other national and international initiatives in existence,
both legal initiatives, directed towards different documentary types (for
example, the
NormeInRete
Project for the legislation), and those on a
more general level (for example, the “Dafne” Project for academic-scientific
literature).

Figure 10
: Home Page of the
Portal “Italian Legal Authority”

The “
Portale della
dottrina giuridica
” (“Legal Authority Portal”) should be able to provide:

a) identification of
the material with research tools based on the semantics of the documents
(bibliographical and conceptual elements) and on specific identifiers;

4. CD-ROMs

“
Gazzetta
Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana
” (“Official Gazette of the Italian
Republic”): issued
annually by the “
Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato
” (“State
Polygraphic Institute and Mint”), the electronic edition of the Official
Gazette contains the full text of all the measures published from 1 January
until 31 December of each year in the whole series of the O.G., Part I (General
Series + 4 Special Series).

“Juris Data”, edited by
Giuffré, certainly deserves a special position. It is a series of CD-ROMs (also
available now on DVD), often with the possibility of updating online, relating
to:

·
“
Legislazione e
Codici
” (“Legislation and Codes”): legislative collection on two CD-ROMs of
legislative measures of the Italian State, in the original historic version
accompanied by a rich selection of legislative texts, and in the current text
in force together with the collection of the Civil Code, Code of Civil
Procedure, Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Criminal
Military Codes and the Code of Navigation;

·
“
Giurisprudenza
”
(“Jurisprudence”): collection of “
massime
” with online updating
divided into two CD-ROMs, one constantly up-dated, covering the years from 1992
up until now, and the other with the years covered by the Digest from 1979
until 1991;

·
“
DVD-ROM Juris
Data
”: national legislation (both historic and currently in force) and the
Codes, the “
massime
”
of the jurisprudence based on the decisions
of 64 Authorities, the decisions of the Civil and Criminal Divisions of the
Supreme Court, the decisions of the Constitutional Court, regional legislation;

·
“
DVD-ROM Juris
Data Maior
”: national legislation (both historic and currently in force)
and the Codes, the “
massime
” of the jurisprudence based on the decisions
of 64 Authorities, the decisions of the Civil and Criminal Divisions of the
Supreme Court, the decisions of the Regional Administrative Courts and the
Council of State, the decisions of the Constitutional Court, regional
legislation, Notes and Legal Authority;

·
“
CD Juris Data -
Sentenze della Cassazione Civile
”
(“CD Juris Data - Decisions of the
Civil Division of the Italian Supreme Court”): collection of decisions in full
text format and officially reported, on two CD-ROMs containing decisions from
1986 until 1995 and decisions from 1996 to the present.

Also edited by “Giuffré”
publishing house are:

·
“
CD Arianna
”:
a database that collects together all the legislation in the credit and financial
sector. It applies the rules of the legislation in force so the users are given
a complete and effective picture;

·
“
CD Teseo
”: a
specialized and innovative database originating from the integration of brief
“forms” relating to all the financial tools and banking products existing on
the market which refer to both legal and financial measures;

·
“
DVD-ROM
Enciclopedia del Diritto
”
(“DVD-ROM Encyclopedia of Law”): 52 volumes
of “entries”, an index of 18,000 terms, an alphabetical list of more than 1,600
authors, each followed by the title of the published entries;

·
“
CD –
Lavoro
”: database of labour law and social security;

·
“
ReMIDA -
Rivalutazione monetaria e interessi
”
(“King MIDAS – Currency
and Interest Revaluation”): software allowing the user to perform, with utmost
simplicity and precision, all the operations necessary for calculating interest
(legal and ordinary interest, or that relating to special taxes) and the
ISTAT
(“
Istituto Nazionale di Statistica
” – “Italian Institute of
Statistics”) revaluation on monetary credits, guiding the user in the in-put
phase in terms of the data requested;

·
“
ReMIDA - Danno
alla persona
”
(“King MIDAS - Personal Injuries”): software for
personal computers, which consists of an electronic legal advisor in Windows
version. It enables the computer calculation of the amount of damages for
personal injuries, using the tables for biological injuries laid down in the
Law 57/2001 and those used in most of the Italian Courts;

·
“
E-LEX Software
Gestionale
” (“E-LEX Management Software”): for legal firms, developed by
Datamat and distributed by Giuffré Editore. It is an integrated software
environment for lawyers, which has the important added value provided by a
communication environment, based on Internet, allowing lawyers to link up and
exchange information with the Court Offices;

·
“
Le leggi
d’Italia
” (“Laws of Italy”) by Vittorio De Martino: Italian laws in their
current and co-ordinated version, with comment on the jurisprudence of all the
Highest Courts;

·
“
I Codici
d’Italia
” (“The Codes of Italy”): the Codes of Italy in their current and
co-ordinated version, 153,000 “
massime
” of the Highest Courts, more than
30.000 grounds for the decisions of the Civil and Criminal Divisions of the
Supreme Court, all the decisions of the Constitutional Court since 1956;

·
“
Prassi delle
Leggi d'Italia
” (“Practices of the Laws of Italy”): collection of circulars
and other documents interpreting the provisions of the laws starting from 1996,
and passed by over 35 different bodies;

·
“
Diritto del
Lavoro
” (“Labour Law”): all the topics relating to work under an employment
contract, quasi-subordinate employment, self-employment and employment in the
public sector. The published documentation is appropriately classified and
linked through a system of logical links and references;

·
“
Repertorio di
Giurisprudenza
” (“Digest of Jurisprudence”): from 1981 up until now, the
Digest collects together over 600.000 “
massime
”, relating to decisions
on the law and on the merits, published in the main Italian and foreign law
journals.

“IPSOA” publishing house co-ordinates
all national and regional legislation, in its current and prior version, and
gives the interpretation of all the Highest Courts, linking it to the
individual articles of the law. In particular:

·
the official texts
of new laws published in the Official Gazette can be searched in full text
directly in the database (each measure is immediately available in its
co-ordinated version with all the latest amendments that have been made);

·
all national and
regional legislation in its current version and all the prior versions
beginning from its publication; with links among the various provisions;

·
the
jurisprudence of all the Highest Courts, classified and correlated to the
legislation, with an indication of precedents in conformity or dissenting from
the decision, so the subscriber can evaluate the issues in the light of the
approaches taken by the different Courts;

·
in addition, the
online up-dating, which interacts directly with the
“
La Legge
”
(“The Law”) database, both on CD-ROM and DVD, informs the subscriber daily
about new developments concerning legislation and any amendment that have been
made;

“Simone” publishing house
encloses the relative CD-ROM with their paper-based publications (Civil
Proceedings, Criminal Proceedings, proceedings before Judges of the Peace, proceedings
before Labour Judges).

·
“
LEX
”:
legal-legislative
database (online and on DVD) for retrieving all the
Laws and Decrees of the State currently in force, with Jurisprudence, Notes
taken from professional journals, and the Questions of the “Answers from the
Expert” column;

·
“
Diritto di famiglia
”
(“Family Law”): database on CD-ROM relating to the many civil and criminal
aspects of Family Law, Successions and Gifts;

·
The “
Guida
Normativa
” (“Legislative Guide”) offers a double CD-Rom database, rich in
content: a) all the issues of the “
Guida Normativa
” from 1991 up until
all of 2003, complete with annexes; b) the last three years of the “Answers
from the Expert” column, relating to taxation, employment, companies, credit,
the Regions, the environment and other sectors.

·
“
Lex + Codex
”
(“Lex + Code”): approximately 82,000 norms of the State from 1861 up until now
in their historic version and, to a large part, in their constantly updated
current version; the rulings of the Constitutional Court where there has been
unconstitutionality; the Constitution and the four main Codes, accompanied by
their implementing and transitional provisions;

·
“
Lex - Regioni
”
(“Lex - Regions”): the Regional laws of all the Regions of Italy and the
Provincial laws of the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano;

·
“
Lex – La
Prassi
” (“Lex – The practices”): the Circulars issued from 1996
onwards by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and all the Ministries,
including the Ministries from past Legislatures;

·
“
Repertorio
della Giurisprudenza Italiana”
(“Digest of Italian Jurisprudence”): the “
massime
”
published in the main Italian law journals dating from 1981, relating to
decisions handed down by approximately sixty different adjudicating bodies (on
the merits and on the Law); reports of the main legal writings published since
1981; information about the legislation in force, organized by subject matter;
authored notes commenting on the “
massime
”;

·
“
Cassazione
Civile
”
(“Civil Division of the Supreme Court”): over 65.000
decisions in full text of the Civil Division of the Supreme Court, officially
reported and handed down from 1986 up until now;

·
“
Cassazione
Penale
”
(“Criminal Division of the Supreme Court”): a wide selection
of the decisions in full text of the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court,
handed down from 1995 up until now.

Also there are:

·
“
I Codici regionali
”
(“The Regional Codes”);

·
“
Giurisprudenza
ipertestuale
” (“Hypertextual Jurisprudence”);

·
“Liability for the
Management of Corporations”: the CD-ROM accompanies every volume of the series
and contains the following:

·
“
Giurisprudenza
”
(“Jurisprudence”)
:
contains a Digest of the decisions and other
rulings relating to the topics dealt with.

·
“
Inventario
”
(“Inventary”): a list of the topics dealt with in the grounds for the decisions
on the liability of company directors and auditors.

·
“
Materiali”
(“Topics”):
contains documents concerning the different topics dealt with, as well as some
Italian and foreign legislation.

·
“
LEX
”
collects together the full text of the legislation of the Italian Republic from
1861 up until now.

·
“
Repertorio della
Giurisprudenza Italiana
”
(“Digest of Italian Jurisprudence”): this
collects together the “
massime
” published every year in the main Italian
law journals (concerning decisions handed down by all adjudicating bodies), the
bibliographical details of the most important authored law (notes to decisions,
articles, volumes or entries in Encyclopedias) and the citation of legislation
in force regarding the main Headings under which all the documents are
classified.

·
“
La Cassazione
Civile
”
(“The Civil Division of the Supreme Court”): this contains,
in full text, all the decisions handed down by the Civil Division of the
Supreme Court dating from 1986, officially reported by the Court Reporter’s
Office and available to the public.

·
“
La Cassazione
Penale
”
(“The Criminal Division of the Supreme Court”): it contains
the full text (heading, particulars, fact and law, grounds, etc.) of a very
wide selection of criminal decisions of the Supreme Court dating from 1995.
Each decision is classified under the same system used in the Headings of the “
Repertorio
della Giurisprudenza Italiana”

·
“
Il Diritto di
famiglia ipertestuale
”
(“Hypertext Family Law”): accompanying the
volume, this is the complete work of legal authority on CD-ROM, created on the
basis of a very analytical index of the material to which all the topics useful
for the research are combined.

·
“
Digesto
ipertestuale
”
(“Hypertext Digest”), edited by P.G. Monateri (2003):
approximately 2,100 entries relating to civil, commercial, criminal and public
law are collected together on a single CD-ROM, with the possibility of directly
searching most of the citations found in the comments.

·
“
Manuale
ipertestuale del diritto privato
” (“Hypertext Manual of Private Law”):
conceived and created for the first time in hypertext format in order to
utilize the teaching potential of the computer tool, this manual is made up of
a paper-based and electronic version, designed to complement each other.

“
Cd-ROM Foro e Cassazione civile
”
(“CD-ROM Forum and Civil Division of the Supreme Court”) presents material
found in the following databases:

·
“
Foro Italiano
”;

·
Civil Division of
the Supreme Court.

“
DVD
of
Foro Italiano
”
contains more than a million documents, divided into the following databases:

·
Jurisprudence;

·
Bibliography;

·
Architecture;

·
“
Foro italiano
”;

·
Civil Divisions of
the Supreme Court;

·
The Four Codes

5. Mailing Lists and Newsgroups

We shall
cite, as an example, “
Diritto & Diritti
”, which offers various “Mailing Lists”
(one dedicated to Administrative Judges, one focused on online Administrative
Proceedings, one aimed at the Judges of Taxation Commissions, and one on
“Cybercrime” and procedure).

Among the best services
available, we would like to mention not only that offered by
Google
, which through a special search
engine enables the user to carry out a full text search within the messages,
but also that offered by
Arianna
.

2. Glossary of the Most Frequently Used Italian
Legal Terms

A

Abrogazione
[Repeal]
: the ceasing of a legal norm or a legislative act’s
enforceability. The repeal can be expressed (by an explicit statement of
legislator) or implied (because of inconsistency with subsequent law). Moreover
it can be a consequence of referendum or due to intrinsic causes (special laws
issued for a limited period or in particular circumstances).

Appello nominale [Roll call]
: one of the ways in which the Houses of a
Parliament vote. It consists in the calling in alphabetical order of each
single Member of Parliament, who is expected to openly and publicly cast his or
her vote.

Assemblea costituente [Constituent Assembly]
:
special and provisional collegial body
elected to draw up and to approve a Constitution, as well as to carry out the
legislative tasks normally appertaining to Parliament.

Assemblea Generale delle Nazioni Unite [General
Assembly of the United Nations]
:
United Nations body made up of all the Organization’s Member-States.

Associazione [Association]:
organized complex of people and property having no
financial ends.

Associazione Nazionale Magistrati [A.N.M. –
National Association of Magistrates]
:
free association to which almost all Italian magistrates belong. It is
divided into different currents that elect its Governing Committee and propose
candidates for the election of the “
Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura
”
(Superior Judiciary Council).

Atti di alta amministrazione [Upper Administrative
Acts]
:
fundamental
directives adopted by the Public Administration in order to meet Government
policies on the management and care of its functions (these therefore act as
links between policy and administration).

Atti aventi valore di legge [Legally binding Acts]
:
decrees law, legislative decrees and
normal Regional laws are defined as such. They are characterized by the fact
that, although having all the effects of law, they are limited in terms of
their duration or in what they regulate.

Atti di concerto [Collegial Acts]
:
acts that invest more than one authority
and more than one particular competence and for which more than one body
concurs with respect to what is regulated.

Atti di controllo [Controlling Acts]
:
second level regulations to reform –
or to re-examine – a previously passed act or procedure (the following
are examples of these: visas, approvals, authorizations, validations or annulments
during checking procedure).

Atti giuridici comunitari [European Community Legal
Acts]
: this expression defines the
“derived European Community Law”, that is the set of regulations drawn up by
European Community Institutions, whose direct basis is Treaties (original
European Community Law).

Atti ispettivi del Parlamento [Parliamentary
Inspecting Acts]
:
a posteriori
acts (usually passed separately by each House) that politically control the
activity of the Government. These make up the parliamentary “political
inspection”. In certain cases they take on a preventive form in order to
solicit a decision such as, for example, in the case of parliamentary questions.

Atti normativi [Normative Acts]
: acts that affect an indeterminate number of
subjects and can modify or renovate the existing legal system. They are
therefore a “source of the Law”.

Atti parlamentari [Parliamentary Acts]
:
acts resulting from the work carried out
by each House of Parliament (Deputies and Senators). Parliamentary acts also
include summary reports of Committee meetings, that contain all the bills
presented in the Houses.

Atti politici [Political Acts]
: through these acts Government policy (that is the
supreme will of the State) is implemented.

Atto unilaterale [Unilateral Act]
:
acts through which a single party (in
particular a State) sets down rules that result in rights and obligations in
the legal relationships existing between international community parties.

Autarchia [Autarchy]
: the ability of bodies other than the State to
dispose of public authority; it consists in the ability, inherent to public
bodies, to administer their own interests by carrying out an administrative
task that has the same character and the same legal efficacy as that of the
State.

Autogoverno [Self-Government]
: expression that comes from institutions that are
typically found in Anglo-Saxon legal systems (“self-government”). It stands for
the particular condition of certain public bodies that are permitted to
administer themselves by means of internal institutions and procedures.

Autonomie locali [Autonomous Local Bodies]
:
local bodies that the State recognizes as
autonomous authorities; they have the right and the effective ability to
regulate and to administer – within the bounds of the Law and on their
own responsibility – a significant part of public affairs.

Autorità amministrative indipendenti [Independent
Administrative Authorities]:
public bodies or institutions created by the legislator in order to guarantee
autonomy and impartiality in specific and particularly important areas for the
State and/or the economy; they are therefore organizationally and financially
autonomous, are self-auditing and have substantial independence towards the
Government.

Avvocatura dello Stato [State Attorney-General
Office]
: auxiliary organ with
general competencies that the State Administration institutionally entrusted of
the representation and the defense in judgment involving ordinary,
administrative and special jurisdiction, arbitration colleges and
constitutional jurisdictions.

B

Bicameralismo perfetto [Pure Bicameralism]
: in a twin House parliamentary system both Houses
have identical powers and functions.

Bilancio dello Stato [State Budget]
:
law consisting of an accounting document
in which, in accordance to specific criteria, the State’s income and
expenditure for a given period is set down.

Bollettino Ufficiale [Official Bulletin]
:
a periodical issue edited by Public Bodies
and Administrations which publishes internal regulations and, more in general,
the laws and rules regulating the administrative sectors within the
competencies of the Body that publishes the Bulletin.

Burocrazia [Bureaucracy]
:
complex of offices and personnel that
apply the regulations drawn up by the organs of the Public Administration.

C

Capacità giuridica [Capacity to have rights]
: capacity
to be holder of legal
rights and obligations.

Capacità di agire [Capacity to exercise rights]
:
capacity
to acquire and to
exercise subjective rights and to take on obligations; it is therefore the
aptitude to create, modify or to extinguish one or more legal relationships.

Casellario giudiziale [Criminal Records Office]
: filing cabinet established in each Public
Prosecutor’s Office, that has the task of collecting and preserving the
abstracts of regulations and notations concerning all the people born in the
District in relation to which registration is required by Law.

Catasto [Land Register]
: general list of all property (land or real
estate) that determines the consistency and the income of property through its
description, measurement and estimation.

Circondario [District]
: territorial area that delimits the competence of
an ordinary Court.

Coalizione di Governo [Government Coalition]
: coalition of Parties that, taken together an
absolute majority in Parliament, provides the parliamentary basis for the
Government. It pursues a coordinated and common political line with respect to
the political Parties that it comprehends.

Codice [Code]
:
systematic and organized set of laws relating to the same
subject or sector (for example: Civil Code, Penal Code, etc.).

Codificazione [Codification]
:
ordered and coherent system of norms and
regulations in a particular field.

Comitato delle Regioni [Committee of the Regions]
:
consultative body set up by the Treaty on
European Union. It is made up of the representatives of Local and Regional
Councils and it is nominated on the basis of proposals from the respective
Member-States.

Commissione europea [European Commission]
:
executive organ of the European Union that
implements Community acts and treaties.

Comune [Commune]
:
territorially defined public body headed by a Mayor elected
directly by the citizens.

Conferenza permanente tra Stato e Regioni
[Permanent Conference between State and Regions]
:
corporate Body
that
has an information, consultation and coordinating role with respect to general
policies (barring foreign policy, justice and national security).

Conferenza Stato-Città [State-City Conference]
: has a coordinating role in the relationship
between the State and Local Bodies, and educational and information role for
tackling problems regarding policies that may have a direct impact on assigned
or delegated functions (Provinces, Communes, Mountain Communities).

Consigli giudiziari [Judicial Councils]
: organs of the Ordinary Magistracy at each Appeal
Court. They have an administrative character, that is compulsorily determined
by Law and they are competent for all magistrates of the District.

Consiglio comunale [Communal Council]
: highest institutional organ of the Commune. The
Communal Council represents the local community by which it is directly
elected. It has duties of policy and of political-administrative control.

Consiglio dell’Unione Europea [Council of the
European Union]
:
European
Community organ which has important functions with regard to the creation
of legal acts and treaties. Its presidency is assigned on a six-month in
rotation to each Member-State of the European Union.

Consiglio di gabinetto [Cabinet Council]
: organ that assists the Prime Minister and the
Vice-Prime Minister in their political activity, notwithstanding the powers of
the Council of Ministers.

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
[C.N.R. –
National Research Council]
:
national research organization,
with general scientific competence and with scientific research Institutes
distributed over Italy, which carries out activity of primary interest for the
promotion of science and the progress of the Country. CNR has the legal status
of a public organization, and defines for itself autonomous rules and
regulations, in accordance with the existing laws and the Civil Code.

Consiglio notarile [Notarial Council]
:
established in each Notarial District, it
has a watch role on the notarial profession and on the conduct of notaries
registered in the District.

Consiglio dell’Ordine degli Avvocati
[Bar Association Council]
:
established in each Court District, it is
an organ that
performs various tasks related to the
professional roll control, to the watch over registered practitioners, to the
advise in honorary matter and the profession prestige safeguard.

Consiglio provinciale [Provincial Council]
:
representative collegial organ that has a
guiding and political-administrative inspection role in the context of the
Province.

Consiglio regionale [Regional Council]
: the highest deliberative and representative organ
of the Region. It has normative and administrative competencies as well as
organizational, financial and book-keeping autonomy.

Consiglio di sicurezza [Security Council]
: it is the most important organ of the United
Nations Organization and has a fundamental task in the maintenance of
international peace and security.

Consiglio di Stato [Council of State]
: an organ that has a jurisdictional and
consultative function in the administrative sphere. In its consultative role it
pronounces on all matters regarding the Public Administration through
“opinions”. These can be “compulsory” or “binding”. As a jurisdictional organ,
it is competent to re-examine on second level the judgements pronounced by the
Regional Administrative Tribunals (TAR).

Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura
[C.S.M. – Superior Council of the Magistracy]
:
body provided for under the Italian
Constitution (article No. 104). It is a self-governing body of the Magistracy.
It issues orders for the appointment, assignment, transfer and promotion of
magistrates (judges and public prosecutors) together with having responsibility
for disciplinary judgements. It is made up of the President of the Italian
Republic (acting as its Chairman), by the first President of the Court of
Cassation and by the Court of Cassation’s Public Prosecutor (all these being
members as of right). There are also thirty elected members holding office for
four years: two thirds are ordinary magistrates (elected by the Magistracy) and
one third are full professors in Law and lawyers with 15 years of practice
(so-called “lay members” elected by the Parliament in joint session).

Consuetudine [Custom]
: source of Law that consists of a behavior,
conforming to the Law, which is kept in a constant and uniform way by the
citizens. It is a primary level source in the hierarchy of norms of the
international legal system.

Consultazione popolare [Popular Consultation]
: system of inquiry: opinion poll, through which
the attitude of citizens with respect to political-administrative orientations
is verified.

Corte Costituzionale [Constitutional Court]
:
body set up by the Italian
Constitution to carry out the following functions: to adjudicate on the
constitutionality of laws (deciding whether they comply with the provisions of
the Constitution); to adjudicate on conflicts between State Powers
(legislative, administrative, judicial), between the State and Regions or
between different Regions; to adjudicate on the admissibility of repealing
referendums; to adjudicate, in cases provided for under the law, on criminal
charges brought against the President of the Italian Republic. The Court is
made up of fifteen judges holding office for nine years.

Corte d’Appello [Court of Appeal]
:
body forming part of the
ordinary civil and criminal Court system. It is made up of three judges. It
represents the second level of the judicial system, that of appeal against
decisions of the first instance Court (“Tribunale”). It has territorial
jurisdiction within its own District, generally corresponding to a Region. The
Court is normally located in the Region capital.

Corte d’Assise [Court of Assizes]
:
Court with ordinary
jurisdiction in criminal matters with competence to try a number of serious
offences at first instance. It is made up of a President (a judge qualified for
the Court of Appeal), a judge qualified for an ordinary Court (“
giudice a
latere
”) and six jurors. In carrying out their functions the jurors have
equal status to the Court judges: their votes count for the same as those of
the judges when the Court reaches a sentence.

Corte dei Conti [Court of Accounts]
:
body set up under the Italian
Constitution (articles No. 100 and 103). It is responsible for checking the
legitimacy of the activities of the Government and of the Public
Administration. It is also responsible for checking the management of the
accounts of the State, of the Public Administrations generally and of the
bodies subsidized by the State. It also has a judicial function in the field of
public accounting and in relation to pensions of State officials. It is divided
into “checking” divisions and “judicial” divisions. When dealing with matters
of particular significance it sits in United Sessions. The Court of Accounts
also has a consultative function (when asked to give opinions on specific
matters) and a referral role when it is called upon to report directly to the
Houses of Parliament on the results of the checks it has carried out.

Corte di Cassazione [Supreme Court of Cassation]
:
as
Italy’s Supreme Court, it is
entrusted with ensuring the precise observance and uniform interpretation of
the law. Questions relating to conflicts of jurisdiction, competence and powers
within the Magistracy are also referred to it for adjudication. It hears
appeals both in civil and criminal matters against decisions reached by lower
Courts but only on points of law (assessment of legitimacy). It is thus
concerned to ensure that the Court dealing with the merits of the case has
correctly applied and interpreted the
law in reaching its decision.
It
is a collegial body dealing with ordinary jurisdiction. It is divided into
so-called “simple” divisions (6 criminal, 3 civil and 1 for labour cases). In
cases of particular importance it sits in United Sessions. Its offices are in
Rome and it has jurisdiction over the whole territory of the Italian Republic.

Corte di giustizia della Comunità Europea
[Court of Justice
of
the European Community
]
:
the Court of Justice of
the European Community (often referred to simply as “the Court”) was set up in
1952 under the Treaty of Paris (establishing the “European Coal and Steel
Community”). Its job is to ensure that European Union legislation (technically
known as “Community Law”) is interpreted and applied in the same way in each
Member-State, in other words, that it is always identical for all Parties and
in all circumstances. The Court has the power to settle legal disputes between
Member-States, European Union Institutions, businesses and individuals. The
Court is composed of one judge per Member-State, so that all the EU’s national
legal systems are represented. Even after enlargement there will still be one
judge per Member-State, but for the sake of efficiency the Court will be able
to sit as a “Grand Chamber” of just eleven judges instead of always having to
meet in a plenary session attended by all the judges.

Corte europea dei diritti dell’uomo [European Court
of Human Rights]
:
international
Court established by the European Convention for the safeguarding of Human
Rights. It can be appealed to for violations of rights and liberties guaranteed
by the Convention.

Corte Internazionale di Giustizia [International
Court of Justice]
:
Supreme
International Court established in 1945. In accordance to the Statute it is an
organ of the United Nations. It is made up of fifteen judges of various
nationalities who are elected on the basis of their competencies and moral
standing.

Costituzione [Constitution]
: fundamental law of the Republic that sanctions
the fundamental principles, the duties and rights of citizens. It also
regulates the State organization.

D

Decreto-legge [D. L. – Decree Law]
: normative Government act. It is used in very
particular and urgent cases and has a time limit of sixty days from the date of
its publication on the “
Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica
” [“Official
Gazette of the Republic”]. Decrees law can be converted to laws by Parliament.

Decreto legislativo [D. Lgs. – Legislative
Decree]
: a provision that has the
binding force of law. It is adopted by the Government with a deliberation of
the Cabinet and it is passed by the President of the Italian Republic on the
basis of a delegated law (“
legge delega
”).

Decreto ministeriale [D. M. – Ministerial
Decree]
: secondary normative act
with a solely regulatory purpose that individual Ministers can issue in the
context of their Department and by virtue of a law that expressly predisposes
it.

Decreto del Presidente della Repubblica
[D. P. R. – Presidential Decree]
:
provision with which the President of the Italian Republic issues acts provided
by the Constitution or by Constitutional Law, those relative to the
organization of the personnel of the Secretary of the Presidency, as well as
all the acts that are expressly listed by the law 13/’91 (for example, the nomination
of State Undersecretaries, the decision on extraordinary appeals, granting of
Italian citizenship, dissolution of Communal and Provincial Councils).

Demanio [State Property]
: complex of properties of the State, Regions,
Provinces and Communes. Its scope is to serve the public interest and, as such,
it is subject to different rules than those that govern private property. This
kind of property is, in fact, inalienable and from it cannot accrue any right
to a third part.

Democrazia diretta [Istituti di, Institutions of
Direct Democracy]
: Institutions
provided by the Constitution through which the people, in whom sovereignty
rests, directly exercises its powers. These institutions are: popular
initiative of bills and laws, right of petition and the popular referendum.

Deputati [Members of Parliament]
:
members of Parliament elected by direct
universal suffrage, some by means of majority voting system and others by means
of proportional representation system. All citizens over twenty five years can
be elected as long as they are not in a state of ineligibility as set out by
Law. Their mandate lasts for five years, which is for the whole legislature.

Deregulation
:
progressive suppression of norms issued by public authority
that regulate, in particular, economic activity. In practice this means the
abolition of controls having social objectives that limit the free initiative
of entrepreneurs.

Direttiva comunitaria [Community Directive]
:
in
European Community Law a directive is a legislative instrument that is binding
on the Member-States to which it is addressed as regards the result to be
obtained, but leaves them free to determine the form and methods.
Directives may be adopted under
the
European Community Treaty either by the European Parliament and the Council or
by the Council or by the Commission. The Community institutions use
“Regulations” more often than “Directives” in judicial cooperation in civil
matters. Once adopted, Community Directives still have to be transposed by each
of the Member-States, that is to say they must be implemented by national Law.

Diritto amministrativo [Administrative Law]
:
branch of the Law that regulates, within
the bounds of the Constitution and of the Law, the administrative activity of
the State in all its facets. It is concerned with the organization, property,
means, forms and the safeguarding of the activity of the Public Administration.

Diritto costituzionale [Constitutional Law]
:
the fundamental principles and regulations
of the State, citizens and all other community parties. These regulations are
contained in the Constitution (see
“
Costituzione
”) and in the
constitutional laws.

Diritto internazionale [International Law]
:
set of rules on which States regulate
their political, economic and social relationships. Amongst International Law
sources, international Treaties are of particular importance.

Diritto pubblico [Public Law]
: set of regulations that govern the formation, the
organization and the activity of the State and Public Bodies, as well as their
relations with private parties in cases in which the State or Public Bodies are
in a position of superiority that derives from the fact that the latter are
acting as public authorities.

Disegno di legge [Draft Bill]
:
normative text drafted as articles, proposed for
the approval of the Senate, presented by the Senators, the Government, at least
fifty-thousand electors, a Regional Council or by the “
Consiglio Nazionale
dell’Economia e del Lavoro
” (CNEL – National Council for the Economy
and Work). In the Chamber of
Deputies
a “
Progetto di legge
” (bill)
issued by the Government is referred to thus (in order to distinguish it from a
“proposta di legge”, which is not proposed at the initiative of the
Government).

Disposizioni sulla legge in generale o preleggi
[Provisions for law in general or Pre-laws]
: norms that are premises of the Civil Code that regulate the entire
Italian legal system. There are two types: the first is concerned with Law
sources; the second sets norms in relation to Law application criteria (binding
effect, effects over time, interpretation of Law, treatment of foreigners).

Disposizioni transitorie e finali della
Costituzione [Transitional and Final Provisions of the Constitution]
:
provisions, marked by Roman numbers, that
contain norms that have the same formal value as the Constitution. The majority
of these are aimed at regulating and guaranteeing, by means of transitional
norms, the correct establishment of the new constitutional regime
.

E

Elettorato [Electorate]
: the exercise of a public power attributed to all
the electors expected to vote. Belonging to the electorate is documented and
attained through being registered in the electoral register. It can be
distinguished as “active” (the capacity to vote) and “passive” (the capacity to
be elected).

Elezioni [Elections]
: popular consultation through which the citizens,
with the exercise of their right to vote, choose their representatives in the
various institutional organizations (e.g. Parliament).

Enti locali [
Local Bodies
]
: public bodies that operate in a restricted
territorial area for matters that are of strictly local interest; in order to
carry out this task they are, at various levels, politically and legally
autonomous.

Enti pubblici [Public Bodies]
:
legal persons through which the Public
Administration carries out its administrative activity.

F

Federalismo [Federalism]
: model of State decentralization, typical of
liberal-constitutional governments, in which political power is
constitutionally shared between a (central) federal State and its Member-States
(Cantons, Länder, etc.).

Fonti del diritto [Sources of the Law]
: each of the various types of facts or acts that,
in the context of a given legal system, can give rise to, can modify or cancel
legal norms. These acts or facts are referred to as “sources of Law
production”, while norms of constitutional nature that grant them the power to
produce laws are referred to as “sources on Law production”. Both are referred
to as “Law sources in the formal sense”.

Forma di governo [Form of Government]
: the way in which the political power of a State
is organized and managed. In particular, in relation to the way in which
executive and legislative power is divided, the form of government can be
parliamentary or presidential.

Funzione pubblica (Dipartimento della) [Public
Administration (Department for)]
:
activity carried out in the interest not only of the party exercising that
power but of the community as a whole. All the functions of the State are
included in this notion (legislative activity, jurisdiction and
administration).

G

Gazzetta Ufficiale [G.U. – Official Gazette]
:
periodical publication (published by the
State Printing Office) that has the scope of diffusing awareness of laws and
decrees and to establish the date from which they come into force. As well as
normative acts, the Official Gazette publishes all acts of public interest and
the notifications and insertions that must be compulsorily announced.

Gerarchia delle fonti del diritto [Hierarchy of
Sources of the Law]
:
way of
distinguishing different Law sources according to their importance. The most
important source in Italian legal system is the Constitution.

Giunta comunale [Communal Board]
:
government organ of the Commune. It
carries out proposal and orientation activities with regards to the Communal
Council. It collaborates with the Mayor in the administration of the Commune
and operates through collegial deliberations fulfilling the acts that are not
exclusive to Communal Council or that do not fall within the competencies, in
accordance with the laws or the Statute, of the Mayor or other organs of
decentralized authority.

Giunta provinciale [Provincial Board]
:
executive organ of the Province. Its
competencies include general active administration for all matters that are not
attributed to other provincial organs.

Giunta regionale [Regional Board]
:
executive organ of the Region. It has
general administrative competence and the power to issue circulars and to
regulate its working through specific internal regulations. Also, it has the task
of enacting the political program drawn up by the Council. It can promote bills
and laws and can impugn the constitutionality of State or other Regions laws
that impinge on its competence.

Giurisdizione [Jurisdiction]
: it is one of the three typical modes by which the
sovereignty of the State is enacted. It consists in public and autonomous
authority aiming at the concrete application of the laws of the legal system
and it is attributed to particular organs of the State, that as a whole constitutes
the “Judicial Authority”.

Giustizia amministrativa [Administrative Justice]
:
the complex of institutions that are
predisposed for the defense of the citizens or of public or private
organizations with respect to the Public Administration. The organs of Administrative
Justice are the Regional Administrative Courts (“
Tribunali Amministrativi
Regionali
” – TAR) and, at a secondary level, the Council of State.

Governo [Government]
:
complex body to which the exercise of the
executive power of the State is principally attributed. It consists of a Prime
Minister and Ministers, who together make up the Cabinet. The President of the
Republic nominates the Prime Minister and, on the suggestion of the latter, the
Ministers. The Government also has certain normative powers that are exercised
through the enactment of decree laws, legislative decrees and regulations.

Guardasigilli [Keeper of the Seals]
: he is the Minister of Justice who, by tradition,
is the custodian of the State Seal and in this role countersigns laws and decrees
in order to their publication.

I

Iniziativa legislativa [Legislative Initiative]
: is the first step in the “legislative procedure”
for creating laws. A bill is drafted in paragraphs and articles and is
presented to one of the Houses where it is debated. Those empowered to set this
process in motion are: the Government, individual Members of Parliament, the
electorate, the National Council for the Economy and for Work (“
Consiglio
Nazionale dell’Economia e del Lavoro
” – CNEL) and, in the areas of
their competencies, Regional and Communal Councils.

Interpellanza [Interpellation]
:
inspection act consisting of a written question
made by a Member of Parliament to the Government (or to a Minister) in order to
understand the latter’s behaviour or intentions with respect to particularly
important or general matters. Unlike a parliamentary question, an
“interpellation” must be illustrated by its presenter and is always discussed
in full Assembly (whilst a question can also be answered in a Committee) with
the aim of obtaining an answer from the Government on subjects that are
considered worthy of debate.

Interrogazione [
Parliamentary
Question]
:
political inspection act consisting of a
written question made by a Member of Parliament (usually of the Opposition) to
the Government or to a Minister on a particular situation in order to be
granted information or explanations with regard to a particular issue or the
provisions that have been made or will be made in its regard.

Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato [State
Printing Office and Mint]
:
it
is a body of public economic Law. Set up in 1928, it is under the control of
the Ministry of Treasury, the budget and the financial planning. It has the
task of exercising graphic arts in the interest of the State, the management of
publications and of the State Stationery Office. It publishes the Official
Gazette of the Republic and distributes public databases. To its original
tasks, others – such as minting, the creation of official seals, and, on
the authorization of the Treasury, minting for foreign States – have been
added.

Italgiure
:
online legal database realized by the
Italian “
Centro Elettronico di Documentazione della Corte Suprema di
Cassazione
” (Documentation Electronic Center of the Supreme Court of
Cassation).
It contains about forty
databases of legal electronic documents (regarding legislation, jurisprudence,
legal authority and bibliographies). It can be consulted through the
ItalgiureFind querying language or via “Easy-Find” software. The ItalgiureWeb
querying system is currently available on the Web and is freely accessible only
to normal magistrates.

Iter
legislativo [Legislative
Iter
]
:
expression commonly used to indicate the course
that a bill or any other text presented to Parliament must follow before arriving
at a definitive vote.

L

Lavori parlamentari [Parliamentary Works]
: activities carried out by Parliamentary
Assemblies, Boards, Groups and Committees, as well as by other bodies in
accordance with Parliamentary Houses regulations, adopted to ensure the proper
functioning of Parliament itself.

Lavori preparatori [Preparatory Works]
:
activities that precede the approval of
legislative acts. These include the illustration of bills and their debating in
Assembly. The preparatory works of parliamentary laws are particularly
important and are registered in “
Raccolte degli Atti parlamentari
”
(Parliamentary Act Collections).

Legge costituzionale e Legge di revisione
costituzionale [Constitutional Laws and Constitutional Revising Laws]
: Law sources of a constitutional nature that are
added to the text of the Constitutional Charter and that, differently from
ordinary laws, must be passed by Parliament with specific procedures that are
set out in the Constitution itself.

Legge delega [Delegated Law]
:
it is
a
provision that
defines the subject and the principles that the Government must keep to in
enacting a specific legislative decree.

Legge ordinaria [Ordinary Law]
: it is a provision that is adopted by Parliament,
with the approval of both the Houses – of “Deputies”
and of “Senators”, is enacted by
the President of the Italian Republic and published in the Official Gazette.

Legge regionale [Regional Law]
: it is a provision approved by the Regional
Council, enacted by the Regional President and published in the Official
Gazette.

Legislatura [Legislature]
:
actual length of time of a parliamentary mandate
(five years) for each House (of “Deputies” and of “Senators”), excepting in the
cases in which they may be dissolved prematurely, or prorogated because of a
war. It is articulated into “sessions” and “sittings”.

M

Maggioranza di governo [Government Majority]
: coalition of Parties that has obtained the
majority of seats in Parliament and that supports the Government.

Maggioritario [Majority System]
: electoral formula that divides up national
territory into uninominal or plurinominal constituencies. In uninominal
constituencies the seat is usually assigned to the candidate who has had the
relative majority of votes. In plurinominal constituencies the list that has obtained
the relative majority of votes is given the absolute majority of seats or
receives a bonus that is a greater number of seats than that which
proportionally reflects the electoral result.

Magistratura [Magistracy]
: in its wider sense this term includes the whole
body of public functionaries, whether their offices are legislative, judicial,
executive or administrative. In a more restricted and usual meaning, it denotes
the class of officers who are charged with the application and execution of the
Law
.

Ministero [Ministry]
:
State bureaucratic apparatus that operates
in a specific sector of Public Administration. It depends directly on the
central organ of Government as a Minister, who administrates its activities, is
placed at its head.

Ministro [Minister]
:
constitutional organ of the central
Administration of the State. It has political and administrative functions and
it contributes to the policies of Government in a specific sector of
administrative activity.

Ministro senza portafoglio [Minister without
Portfolio]
: Minister invested with
the political-constitutional authority of member of the Government as a
collegial organ. He is not, however, at the head of a Ministry but is assigned
to carry out tasks of political-administrative nature, which mostly consist in
initiative, coordination and inspection functions.

N

Norma interna [Internal Norm]
:
regulation made by a Public Administration
regarding the carrying out of its functions and the way in which its activities
are run.

O

Organizzazione per la Cooperazione e lo Sviluppo
Economico [O.C.S.E. – Organization for Cooperation and Economic
Development]
: international
organization set up in 1960 to aid the economic growth of its Members and the
development of international trade.

Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite - ONU [United
Nations – UN]
: it has been
founded in 1945 in order to guarantee peace and international security,
economic and social development of the world’s populations and the respecting
of human rights and fundamental liberties.

Ordinamento giudiziario [Judicial System]
: set of norms that regulates judicial functions
and the status of the people to which they are assigned.

P

Parlamento [Parliament]
: constitutional organ elected by the citizens and
made up of the “House of Deputies”
and
the “Senate of the Republic”. Its main functions are of a legislative,
inspection and policy nature.

Parlamento Europeo [European Parliament]
: legislative organ of the European Union, made up
of the representatives of the people of the Member-States who are elected, as
from 1979, every five years by direct universal suffrage.

Prassi amministrativa [Administrative Practice]
: a succession of acts of similar kind carried out
by the Public Administration, even without the belief they are
obligatory.
It is not a source of Law and has no effect on legal system, but it can be used
for the interpretation of administrative acts.

Prassi costituzionale [Constitutional Practice]
: repeated or customary actions
with which
constitutional organs concretely carry out their assigned tasks. Only a few
specific “behavioral practices” followed by the constitutional organs of the
State are derived from them.

Prefetto [Prefect]
:
representative of the Government in the
Provinces. Nominated by a decree of the President of the Italian Republic on
the suggestion of the Interior Minister and after a Cabinet consultation, he
has functions that cover all branches of the State administration and, through
the Provincial Committee for Public Order and Security, coordinates the
strategy for public security in the Province together with the Police
Superintender and other Provincial Commanders of the Police Force.

Presidente del Consiglio [Prime Minister]
:
constitutional organ that has the function
of coordinating and directing the Council of Ministers. He is nominated by the
President of the Italian Republic following a specific procedure that consists
mostly in a series of consultations with Parties leaders and Houses Presidents.
The Prime Minister creates the Government and draws up its program; he has also
the power to propose the nomination of individual Ministers to the President of
the Republic.

Presidente della Repubblica [President of the
Republic]
: he is the highest
institutional office of the State and is elected by Parliament in a plenary
sitting and the representatives of the Regions. All citizens over forty-nine
years, who have full civil and political rights, can be elected to this office.

Presidenti delle Camere [Houses Presidents]
:
the Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies
and the Senate are the organs that preside over the functioning of each House.
A qualified majority is required for their election. Institutionally they are
“impartial organs” and safeguard the autonomy of the Chambers with respect to
other State Authorities. They hold “constitutional attributes” such as the
power of extraordinary convocations of the Chambers and have the right to be
consulted by the President of the Republic before the Chambers are dissolved.

Presidenzialismo [Presidential System]
: form of government characterized by a rigid
separation of authority. In this system the President is elected directly by
the people and is contemporaneously Head of the State and Head of the
Government.

Procedimento legislativo [Legislative
Procedure]
: set of acts
aiming at the laws making in which both Chambers take part.

Procura della Repubblica [Office
of the State Prosecutor]
:
office
that is part of the Italian judicial system, to which the magistrates who carry
out the functions of Public Prosecutor are assigned.

Promulgazione delle leggi [Enactment of Laws]
:
it
is an act of laws control that
must be carried out by the President of the Italian Republic within a month
from the approval of both Chambers of Parliament. The President controls the
law’s constitutional legitimacy. With enactment
the law becomes
enforceable; binding effects for citizens, however, only follow the publication
on the Official Gazette of the Republic.

Progetto di legge [Bill]
: it is a normative text drafted
in articles that is proposed for approval to one of two Chambers. It is
presented by a Member of Parliament, the Government, at least fifty-thousand
electors, a Regional Council or by the National Council for the Economy and
Work (“
Consiglio Nazionale dell’Economia e del Lavoro
” – CNEL).
The term is used above all in the Chamber of
Deputies,
where it is distinguished between “
disegno
di legge” (to indicate a law proposed by the Government) and “proposta di
legge” (which is proposed on different initiatives). In the Senate the term
“disegno di legge” is normally used for all legislative initiatives.

Proposta di legge [
Bill
]:
expression that in the Italian Chamber of Deputies
traditionally means a law that is
not proposed at the Government initiative, whilst in the Senate the legislative
initiatives are denominated as “disegni di legge”.

Provincia [Province]
: territorial public body that is in between the
Commune and the Region. At the head of each Province there is a President of
the Provincial Government, who is elected directly by the citizens.

Provvedimento amministrativo [Administrative
Provision]
:
public
authority act that provides for one or more concrete cases and with respect to
one or more subjects.

Pubblica Amministrazione [Public Administration]
:
the directly pre-ordained organs and
activities that carry out the tasks and the aims considered to be of public
interest by the State community.

Pubblicazione della legge [Publication of Law]
: the act by which a law is officially made public.
It is an act of communication that makes a law operative. A law is published
– in the Official Gazette of the republic – within and not beyond
thirty days from its enactment.

Pubblico Ministero [Public Prosecutor]
: it
is an organ of the State
present at the “Corte di Cassazione” (Court of Cassation), at the “Corti di Appello”
(Courts of Appeal), at the “Tribunali ordinari” (Ordinary Courts) and at the
“Tribunali per i minorenni” (Juvenile Courts).
Moreover, in each Office
of the State Prosecutor attached to the Courts located in the District capitals
there is a “Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia”
(District Anti-Mafia
Division). These divisions are made up of prosecutors specialized in
investigating organized crimes. The offices of the “Pubblico Ministero” are
held by career judges who exercise their functions under the supervision of the
Minister of Justice. Their task is to ensure that the laws are observed, that
justice is administered promptly and regularly, that the repression of crimes
is promoted (they are entitled to start a criminal action) and that security
measures are enforced.

Q

Quorum
:
legal number required for an assembly or a collegial body voting to be valid.

R

Raccolta ufficiale degli atti normativi della
Repubblica Italiana [Official collection of the normative acts of the Italian
Republic]
:
contains legislative
provisions of the State and all Government acts for solely documentary
purposes.

Raccomandazioni [Recommendations]
:
this is the term used in European
Community Law for acts emanated by the European Commission or by the Council of
Europe that are not legally binding. They have the precise scope to oblige
those to whom they are aimed to adopt a comportment judged to correspond more
with the European Community interests.

Referendum
:
direct popular consultation of the electorate through a vote whose object
is a legal text or a political question. It is the most important institution
of direct democracy seeing as it is a tool by which the people exercises its
sovereignty without the intercession of intermediaries. Our legal system
envisages: a) the constitutional referendum, for the adoption of laws that
modify or add to the Constitution; b) the repealing referendum, for the repeal
of a law that is in force; c) the territorial referendum, for the modification
of Regional, Communal or Provincial territory; d) the consultative referendum,
non-legally binding on questions of particular relevance at the Regional level.

Regione [Region]
: is a public territorial body which has legal and administrative
competencies. A President who, depending on Regional Statutes, can be elected
directly by the citizens or chosen by the Regional Assembly, heads it. There
are “Special Statute Regions” for which the Constitution, for political, ethnic
and economic reasons, reserves a special treatment and there are “Ordinary Statute
Regions”.

Regolamenti [Regulations]
: legal provisions that regulate specific matters
within the limits set by the law. Governmental regulations are approved by a
Presidential decree; ministerial regulations are approved by the competent
Minister with a Ministerial decree.

Regolamenti comunitari [European Community
Regulations]
: are the most
important normative sources for the European Community Law; they are legally
binding and are applied directly in each State of the European Union.

Repubblica [Republic]
:
form of government in which the Head of
State, who can be a single person or a body, is elected by the people directly
or indirectly, i.e. through its representatives (Parliament).

Rinvio delle leggi (Potere di) [Returning of laws
to the Chambers of Parliament, Power of]
:
power given by the Constitution to the President of the
Republic; its exercise constitutes a veto that temporarily suspends the
approval of a law by the Houses.

Risoluzione [Resolution]
:
in the European Community Law consists in
an act adopted by the European Parliament that makes a unanimous statement on a
report presented to it by one of its Committees. Resolutions are amongst the
“atypical acts” of the European Community, especially when representatives of
the Member-States, sitting as the Council of Europe, adopt them.

Risoluzione parlamentare [Parliamentary Resolution]
: is a tool that has the function of parliamentary
orientation. It can be presented in Assembly or in Committee.

S

Sanzione [Sanction]
: consequence (fine, imprisonment, etc.) that a
legal norm provides when it is broken.

Sentenza [Sentence]
: jurisdictional provision containing a decision,
pronounced by the judge in a trial. Normally it is the concluding or final act
of a judgment. Its form is established by Law: it is passed “in the name of the
Italian people”, with the title “Italian Republic”, and it contains a
disposition (the pronouncement in short of the judge’s decision) and its
grounds (the statement of reasons for decision in judgement).

Sindacati [Trade Unions]
: collective organizations that represent the
interest of specific categories of people (for example the workers).

Sindaco [Mayor]
:
individual, head of the Communal government and officer of
the State.

Sistema elettorale [Electoral System]
: complex of rules and procedures through which, on
the basis of votes cast by the citizens, seats are assigned to the elected
members.

Sovranità [Sovereignty]
: authority to establish rules and to have them
observed.

Stato [State]
: territorial organization that is created through the political
organization of a people that are stably set in a territory and under the
authority of a government.

Stato federale [Federal State]
: political organization where power is split by a
system that allows the Member-States to conserve some sovereignty.

T

Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale (T.A.R.)
[Regional Administrative Court]
: organ of the Italian judicial system. Its
jurisdiction covers the adjudication at first instance of administrative
provisions appealed on grounds of legitimacy (that is of compliance with the
law) damaging a legitimate interest (that is, the interest of an individual
corresponding to a general public interest).
In some contexts
the Court has the power to adjudicate on the merits of a case or has exclusive
jurisdiction. The Regional Administrative Court has competence within its own
geographical jurisdictional area which coincides with regional boundaries and
has its offices in the regional capital. It has several different divisions and
decisions are made by a panel of three judges. Appeals against its decisions
are made to the Council of State.

Testo Unico [Consolidation Act]
: a collection of norms that regulate a particular
matter. It is approved by a Presidential decree.

Trattati internazionali [International Treaties]
: are sources of international Law. They are
agreements through which the States establish common rules of behavior
(financial, fiscal agreements, etc.) or institute or modify international
bodies.

Tribunale [Ordinary Court]
:
has jurisdiction in both
civil and criminal matters over a geographical area called “circondario”. This
Court may adjudicate as a collegiate court (with three judges sitting) or with
only a single judge. The decisions of the Ordinary Court may be challenged on
appeal to the Court of Appeal for reasons based on the facts giving rise to the
dispute (on the merits) and before the Court of Cassation on appeal on grounds
related either purely to the Law (relating to legal legitimacy) or to
jurisdictional powers (jurisdictional grounds).The Ordinary Court also
exercises the functions of a
Tutelary
Court
together with other specific functions laid down by the Law.

Tribunale dei Ministri [Ministers Court]
: special jurisdictional organ – organized by
lot in each Court that is a seat of an Appeal Court District – that
judges the penal responsibility of Ministers.

U

Unione Europea [European Union]
: economic, political and institutional
organization with very broad competencies to which the majority of European
countries already belong.

V

Vacatio legis
: period of time between the publication of a law and its coming into
force.

Voto (diritto al) [Vote, Right to]
: it is the right, belonging to all citizens, to
elect their representatives in Parliament or in other representative organs of
the State (Regions, Provinces, Communes, Districts).

W

Welfare State
: expression that indicates the system in which the State takes on the
task of promoting the welfare of its citizens through institutional activity
(health care, social security pensions, etc.).

5)
Archivio di legislazione
: it is a very
large database of Italian legislation from 1889 to 2006; the relative Guide is
divided in many categories and it is possible to ask the introduction of
missing laws.

2)
in the field of
Constitutional Law we have also the “
Consulta Online
” Web site, in which it is possible to search
normative texts of constitutional relevance and the Constitutional Court decisions
(until from 1956 up until today), as well as “Cronache” (Current Events),
“Fonti” (Legal Sources), “Studi” (Scientific Contributions and Surveys);

1)
The
DoGi
(Dottrina Giuridica Italiana) database is actually
accessible via subscription, whereas on the Web site only a Demo version is
available;

2)
free of charge is indeed
the consultation of the “
Iusimpresa
” database (in Italian,
English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese), that is a ‘transversal’
collection of legal information covering the following areas: Private Law,
Administrative Law, Civil Law, Law of Banking and Financial Intermediation,
Labour Law, Commercial Law, Insolvency Law, Industrial Law, Criminal Law, Tax
Law, European Union Law, Information and Communication Technologies Law,
Accountancy, Economics and Finance. The archive provides the user with the
following bibliographical data: author; title of the article, case note or
monograph; title of the journal in wich the article or the case note is
contained and the name of the publisher;

4)
the Italian Legal Literature
with relevance for specific areas is often available in the corresponding Web
sites (see, for example, in addition to the above mentioned sites, “
AmbienteDiritto.it
”);

5)
some Web sites
contain as legal literature as legislation and judicial decisions, especially
in relation to determined fields of the Law (see, for an example, the mentioned
site “
Diritto
& Diritti
”).

[i]
Sarah E. Thomas
, (“
Carl A. Kroch
”
Cornell University Library
),
in her interesting article
L’impiego del Portale per l’individuazione di
risorse elettroniche specialistiche
says:
“Il termine ‘portale’ è
diventato molto di moda e spesso è usato in modo piuttosto improprio” (The term
‘portal’ has become very fashionable and is often used in a rather incorrect
way).
The
New York Times
cites more than 1.000 meanings in its articles from
1996, and there are hundreds of vertical portals (specialized in a category of
information, like a discipline, or a user group, like academics) or open,
general portals, like AOL (“America On Line”).

[iv]
Today, the TESEO classification system
(“
TEsauro del SEnato per l’Organizzazione dei documenti parlamentari
” -
Senate Thesaurus for the Organization of Parliamentary Documents) is used on
the most important parliamentary databases of the Senate and the Chamber of
Deputies (bills, parliamentary questions and commissions, grey literature,
Senate’s non-legislative procedures, etc.) and consists of a Thesaurus
containing about 3.000 descriptors.

[vi]
This is a Web protocol that enables a
user situated at a computer to link up to a remote host. After having
established the link, the work station operates as a computer terminal
(terminal emulation), allowing the local user to carry out an interactive
dialogue sessions with this.

*In relation to this Section of the
Guide interesting observations are in
G.
Peruginelli
,
Legal Information on the Web: the Case of Italy
, in
“International Journal of Legal Education”, 2006, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 327-357.